


Our Breath Will Still / A Short Distance Ahead

by irisbleufic



Series: The Still Point of the Turning World [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: 1950s, Alan Turing - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Professors, Boston, Cryptozoology, Dinosaurs, F/M, First Time, Harvard University, Idiots in Love, Jewish Character, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), Loch Ness Monster, M/M, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paleontology, Science Husbands, Scotland, St. Andrews, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:47:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is a study in monster-hunting and risk-taking, professional and otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Our Breath Will Still

The Marliave is just where Newton had left it the last time he'd dropped in on Tendo for an evening of gossip: 10 Bosworth Street, right in the heart of Downtown Crossing. Normally, this part of town isn't his bag; alongside all the accountants, stockbrokers, and rich nitwits staying at the Omni Parker House, he must look more like a goof than an Ivy Leaguer. He pushes through the entrance and makes his way up the dimly-lit stairs, where a middle-aged woman in furs glares at him as he dashes past.

"Hey, _was gibt's_?" he challenges once he's reached the top, turning to face her, arms spread wide so that she can inspect his worn, weathered black leather jacket under the light of the single dangling lamp. "It's clean."

"That's more than can be said for the state of your hair, young man," she sniffs, and is gone.

Fortunately, the _maître d_ _'_ recognizes him and lets him pass without any trouble. He makes a bee-line for the corner seat at the bar, which isn't occupied. Instead of hoisting himself immediately onto the stool, he puts one boot on the lowest rung to claim it and smacks the counter.

Tendo looks up from counting napkins and winks at the pair of fifty-something gents to whom he's been chatting. He straightens his bow-tie, fetches a clean tumbler from under the ledge, and grabs a bottle of expensive rum before coming over to give Newton an appraising once-over.

"Here for the fancy-schmancy food, brother?" Tendo asks, grinning at him. "Pull up a chair."

"Nah," Newton replies, using his foothold for leverage and hopping into his seat. "For the booze and the sparkling conversation, just like Mister Carraway and his gentleman friend over there."

"Speaking of which," says Tendo, tactfully lowering his voice as he pours Newton a double, "how'd that pretty picture from Berklee you snagged a month or so back pan out? He's a regular here. I'd been telling him about you for months."

" _Uh_ ," Newton says, knocking back half of his drink as soon as Tendo's finished. "Not so great."

"That's a goddamn shame," Tendo sighs. "I liked him, but now he doesn't come around that often anymore. _Alison_ liked him, liked the two of you together, and that's saying something. Better luck next time?"

 "Pour yourself one and drink to that," sighs Newton, wearily. "And put it on my tab."

 "Last time I checked, you were barely good for it," Tendo says. "Still doing bits-and-pieces contract work for your slave-driving alma maters. Seriously, why don't you let either of them _hire_ you? It'd ensure some long-term security _and_ make you more attractive to—"

 "Because I've _told_ you, man," Newton insists, clinking his glass against Tendo's, "I don't want to be tied down. I want my summers free for digs, and, most importantly, I've been saving up to travel. That's partly why I'm here. I can afford to go walkabout for a while. I'm leaving next week."

"Holy _fucking_ hell," says Tendo, knocking back his shot. "You're finally gonna go look for Bigfoot, aren't you? I don't have to remind you what a disaster that would spell for your career, right?"

 _"Pffft,_ shut up," Newton mutters, adjusting his collar in order to hide the flush he can feel creeping up his neck. "You know I mostly don't give a shit about the bipedal land-dwellers. Maybe once I've run out of lake monsters to investigate."

"Better go lookin' for Champ, then," Tendo advises. "Anything else is _way_ beyond your dime."

"Nice try," says Newton, smirking, and holds out his tumbler for a refill. "I'm going to Scotland."

"So digging up flippers and teeth just doesn't hack it anymore, huh?" Tendo asks, suddenly more sober than he'd seemed. "No more expeditions out in the Badlands or down in South America? Come on, you _love_ that shit. You'd live in a tent if you could."

"Not this summer, anyway," says Newton, tapping his glass. "I'm trading dust for wind and rain."

"Do you have it all arranged?" Tendo asks, refilling the glass that another patron has brought over to stick under his nose. "Travel plans, a place to stay? You'd better make sure you're not getting taken. You know the deal. Dumb Americans abroad had better cover their asses."

"Relax," Newton says. "I've been in touch with the groundskeeper guy over the telephone a few times. He's set me up with a nice place that's right on the shore. I don't have to pay till I arrive. Besides, I'm not exactly a dumb American. Not like _you_ are," he adds, winking.

"What's the catch?" asks Tendo, clearly impressed. "Loch-side? How can you afford _that_?"

"It's double occupancy," Newton admits, pausing while Tendo goes across to the far end of the bar to refill a few other impatient parties' glasses. "The other bed's rented, so I'll have a roommate."

"Are you sure you can trust this groundskeeper guy?" says Tendo, dubiously, and finishes off his refill tour by adding another two shots' worth to Newt's glass. "How's he sound? Upstanding?"

"He sounds Australian, actually," Newt replies. "Or maybe he's from New Zealand. Anyway, I was expecting Highlands incomprehensibility, but I got something just _slightly_ less gibberish instead."

"Shit, I bet those Scottish blow-hards love him," Tendo chuckles, shaking his head. "I wish you luck over there, brother, even though I don't think you're gonna find a single goddamn thing."

"I can't haul sonar equipment over with me, much though I'd like to," Newt sighs, "and I doubt there'll be any readily for hire. Which is a shame, because in December last year, right, this fishing boat called the _Rival III_ picked up a large object about one hundred and fifty meters down. Did you know that the thing, whatever it was, tailed the boat for _eight hundred_ _meters_ before they lost—"

"You lost _me_ on a hundred and fifty meters," says Tendo, wryly. "What's that in normal-speak?"

"Ugh, you're the worst," Newton says, but he obliges. "Four hundred and eighty feet and twenty-six hundred feet respectively. In short: fucking big object over a fucking long distance, got it?"

Tendo raises both hands in self-defense. "Sure," he says. "But there's an explanation. It's a huge, deep old lake, isn't it? Underwater currents. There must be logs down there. Christ, whole _trees_."

"I'm not having this argument with you again," Newton decides, and downs the rest of his rum. The room is warm, although not to the point of spinning, and somebody's set the jukebox to playing _Give Me Your Word_. "Tomorrow's Easter, isn't it? Do you have plans?"

"Big meal after Mass," says Tendo. "Just me, Al, and Dan. How's Passover been treating you? If you're at a loose end, stop by and join us. What about your dad? What's he think of all this?"

"I don't ship out till the twenty-third," Newton replies, "so I'm spending most of next week down in New York with him and Uncle Illia just to keep the peace. They think I'm a kook, but _I_ think they're secretly excited about all the postcards and crap I've promised to send home."

Tendo looks thoughtful, and then takes a sip of rum. "They haven't been back, have they?"

"To Europe?" Newton asks, frowning into his glass. "No," he says softly. "Not since."

"Hey," Tendo says, clapping him on the shoulder. "Come over tomorrow. Dan loves you."

Newton forces a smile and finishes his drink. "Dan hasn't seen me in two whole months."

"Bring some of those fossils," Tendo suggests. "Ones he can't swallow or drop on his toes."

"Better for his teeth than sugar-covered atrocities," Newton mutters. "Fine. What time?"

"Show up for two," Tendo tells him. "Bring some wine and we'll call it even. Easy there."

Newton wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and shoves his glass resignedly at Tendo.

"You think I'm wasting my time, don't you? You think I'm taking my MIT bachelor's in biology and my Harvard paleo doctorate and throwing them right in that murky, uncharted water, _don't you_?"

" _Whoa_ there, hepcat," says Tendo, quickly snatching the glass away. "No more sauce tonight."

Newton nods, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket, and slides ten dollars across the counter.

"Get out of town," Tendo says, pushing it back at him. "Parting gift on me. Bring wine tomorrow and we're even. You still get that good German shit? Al's just mad over the last one we tried."

"Two bottles left," Newton replies, tucking the money away. "Might as well finish 'em off."

Tendo looks worried for a moment, like he can't figure out how to ask what's on the tip of his tongue. "Look, Newt, you—haven't kept kosher in a while, have you? Not since last I checked?"

"Nope," Newton confirms, yawning. "Don't you dare tell my old man, though, _klar_?"

"Thank fucking God," Tendo says under his breath. "Al's got the ham ready and everything."

Newton claps Tendo's arm, slides unsteadily down from the stool. "I'm beat, man. See you."

Tendo sees him to the door; by the time they reach it, everything's in slow motion, _too_ slow, and Tendo murmurs in his ear, "Hey, did you _eat_ today?" Newton shakes his head, so Tendo whispers something to the _maître d_ _',_ who in turn picks up the telephone, cranks the dial, and proceeds to order a taxi. "Watch the bar, will you? Thanks, my man," says Tendo, smooth as you please, and marches Newton down the stairs and out the door till they're curb-side in the windy April night.

"You gotta find someone to take care of your negligent ass," Tendo sighs, propping Newton up.

"I'm gonna miss you when I'm over there," admits Newton, too candidly, "and that's no joke."

"If you drink too much scotch, fall in the water, and drown, I will exhume your sorry backside just so I can kick it, understood? See, here's your cab," says Tendo, leaning to yank open the door for him as soon as it's pulled up. "Cambridge. He's not so drunk he doesn't know his address, and he's got at _least_ ten bucks in his wallet, so you should get on fine. Good night, Geiszler."

"G'night yourself, Choi," Newton mutters, but he's already sliding into the back seat and staring blearily at the roof of the vehicle. Tendo slams the door, so he tells the driver where to go.

"Rough night, little fella?" asks the driver, his eyes behind his curious shades flicking up to study Newton framed in the rear-view mirror as he pulls into the street. "Wanna talk about it?"

"No," Newton says, dizzily closing his eyes, and lets out a long sigh. "No, I really don't."

"Have it your way," says the driver, gruffly, "and don't you dare go fallin' asleep on me."

"Or you'll what?" Newton asks the ceiling, drumming his restless fingers against the seat.

"Take your ten smackeroos and dump your ass in the Charles," growls the driver, "but you're lucky I'm a decent guy. You're also lucky that class-act bartender gives me my drinks for free."

"You must get lots of poor schmucks home safe," Newton says. "Kiss on the doorstep included?"

"You've got a smart mouth on you, kid," replies the driver, with an unexpected chuckle. "Been friends with Mister Choi for long? Got any idea how he picks up spare change here and there?"

"Gives you gambling tips or something? What do I know," Newton yawns. "Don't care."

"You got it," says the driver, and that's when Newton straightens in his seat in time to see the shades come down a fraction to expose the guy's milky, grotesque left eye. "Your stop's comin' up fast."

"Uh, _right_ ," Newton says, fumbling out his wallet. "Just keep going. Few more streets."

He's more relieved than he ought to be when the taxi screeches to a halt in front of his building, and he hands the driver his ten-dollar bill even though it means over-paying to say the _least_. He's about to slam the door behind him when the driver leans back over the seat and peers at him curiously.

"Slight trace of an accent there," he says, as if puzzled, "but you sure as hell ain't Irish, are you?"

"We came to the States in thirty-three," Newton replies, uncertain why he's finding it so easy to share the worst of his life story with this cretin. "My dad, my uncle, and me. From Berlin."

The driver's expression turns dark. "What'd Choi call you? Geiszler? How about your ma?"

"She left when I was six," says Newton, tersely. "I was thirteen when we got to New York. Hadn't had a letter in a while. And then, five years later, we heard—" He stops short. "Why am I telling you this?"

The driver looks down for a moment, and then lets his eyes drift back up to Newton's face.

"Get in there and go to bed, son," he mutters, "before I decide to tuck you in with some milk and cookies just to make goddamn sure Choi doesn't wreck my wagers from here till Doomsday."

Newton makes a face, but, before slamming the door, what comes out of his mouth is _thanks_.

 

 *

 

 Six days in New York City, even sequestered on Long Island for most of it, is six days too many.

His father and his uncle fuss and over-feed him; they haul him to diners and Chinese restaurants and boast to their friends in an unceasing kaleidoscope of English, German, and Yiddish about how Newton _digs up dinosaurs_. The friends, fossils themselves, mostly mumble and nod politely; they shoot disapproving glances at Newton's boots, which he's worn on every expedition since his first one seven years ago, and he'll be damned if he stops wearing them before they _fall off his feet._

His father and his uncle also repeat the old _When are you going to settle down?_ shtick, but, in the past few years, they've at least dropped the _with a nice girl_ addendum. Newton isn't sure what to make of that, but he's grateful. Maybe it won't be so bad if he ever finds the nerve to tell . . .

He leaves with his shoulder bag stuffed full of film-rolls and his head ringing with entreaties for photographs of pretty much everything he's bound to set eyes on. Just before Newton gets on the train, his father facetiously suggests that he'd better come home with a better photograph of the monster than that shadow silhouette in the papers back in thirty-four. Newton kisses his father's stubbly cheek and hugs him goodbye, doesn't have the heart to tell him it had likely been faked.

Newton spends his remaining week in Cambridge packing, not-so-tactfully withdrawing from his current teaching obligations, and saying goodbye to the small handful of acquaintances who feel important enough to merit the trouble. He's well-liked by his students and regarded by most of the faculty at both institutions with a combination of dislike and grudging respect. He's surprised when his MIT biology undergrads throw him an impromptu send-off after teaching his last class.

The night before he departs, Newton runs into Zacharias, the Berklee doctoral candidate, while he's picking up rudimentary makings for pasta from Cardullo's. He finds it strangely easy to invite him home for wine and dinner, no strings attached, although the necking and groping on Newton's rickety sofa stop short when Zach entreats him not to go and Newton, stammering apologies, tells him he'd better be on his way before they make a huge mistake. One stinging slap later, he's alone.

Boston to Edinburgh by way of Dublin is an exhausting ten-hour journey: the drinks are bad, the food is worse, and he's never liked air travel to begin with. Journeying via ship would've proved more expensive, however, and would've wasted valuable settling-in time.

It's not till he's standing exhausted and bewildered in the bustling midst of Waverley station with his shoulder bag and a suitcase in each hand that he realizes he might be just _slightly_ out of his depth. It's almost nine o'clock in the morning, he's barely slept, and all he can remember from the telephone conversation with Mister Hansen is that he needs to be on a train headed for Inverness.

Four hours, some weak tea, and an awful sandwich later, he's waiting in the rain for his arranged ride to show up and trying not to fall asleep on his feet. Everything he can see is dull, industrial brick and concrete, and the boringly predictable statue of some long-dead personage does nothing to improve his foul mood. By the time a battered forty-eight Ford Prefect pulls up in front of him, its driver laying cheerfully into the horn, Newton feels like snapping someone's head off.

When the bloke at the wheel rolls down the window and grins at him, the impulse vanishes like smoke. Hercules Hansen, groundskeeper and handyman (at least insofar as Newton understands his role in taking care of the rental properties thus far), is ginger, at least ten years Newton's senior, and so unbelievably attractive in an _unattainable_ sort of way that Newton just stands gaping.

"Hey there, mate, haven't seen you before," says Hansen. "You must be Doctor Geiszler. How'd the trip from Stateside treat you? You'd better get in the car before some pensioner asks me for a lift."

"Call me Newt," Newton manages, yanking open the back door and wrestling his suitcases inside. Hansen is out of the driver's seat in a flash, but he doesn't manage to do much more than pat the corner of one suitcase and brace Newton's elbow as he climbs, exhausted, inside. "Only my students call me doctor. And my dad sometimes if he wants to show off. The trip was _awful_."

"Say no more," says Hansen, grimly, climbing back into the car while Newton leans heavily against the window, getting them on the road. "Hauling all the way out here from Down Under damn near killed us." His expression reflected in the rear-view mirror shifts, somber. "My wife, it did."

"I'm sorry to hear," says Newton, hesitantly. "What happened, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Angela was from here," Hansen explains, shrugging. "When we found out she had the cancer, that was that. Chuck and I packed her up, brought her home, and she was dead four months later."

"Chuck?" Newton asks, before he can remind himself to shut the hell up because he's prying.

"My only child," Hansen sighs. "He's twenty-one and reckless. You'll meet him soon enough."

Newton just nods; he can scarcely keep his eyes open, and when next he opens them, the rain has stopped and the car is pulling up along the shoulder of the road. Over the grassy rise, there's an idyllic, if tumbledown whitewashed cottage with blue door-posts and a mossy shingle roof.

Beyond that, the Loch stretches wide and glittering like the answer to Newton's every prayer.

"Welcome to Cameron Cottage," says Hansen, proudly, and kills the engine. "The Dores Inn is a five-minute walk that way, and anything else you'll need is in the village—also that way. There's a post office, a telephone box, and some shops. I'm sure Doctor Gottlieb will show you around."

Newton's already halfway out of the car, but his brain catches up with Hansen's statement.

"Doctor Gottlieb?" he asks blankly, but the rest of the information's coming back. " _Ah_."

"This is the first summer in a while he hasn't asked to rent solo, but times being what they are for you academic types—come _on_ , then," says Hansen, prying one of the suitcases out of Newton's hand in exasperation. "Let's get you inside. Your flatmate keeps the stove going more or less at all hours; I swear he lives on cigarettes and tea. Takes his supper at the Inn most nights—not much of a cook, that one. He's always refused to have help in from the village. Eccentric, if you ask me."

Gottlieb, whoever and however eccentric he may be, is not inside when Hansen shows Newton into the common space with its quaint flagstone floor and lately burnt-out fireplace. The green velvet sofa looks as if it's seen better days, and the nondescript tartan armchairs look like cast-offs from a funeral parlor lounge. The coffee table could have been worse, with chipping cream-colored paint and cabriole legs, but it's the piles of books and papers and record slip-covers occupying every available surface that immediately get up Newton's nose.

 _You tenure-track types_ , he thinks dismally.

"I do teach, but I'm a paleontologist," Newton tells Hansen. "Not that the work is steady or anything, but this is the first summer I haven't spent on-site in almost a decade. Change of pace."

"You sound more like a man of action than this one here," says Hansen, setting down his suitcase. "Will that be all for now? Is there anything else I can get you?" He hands Newton his key.

"No, but thanks. Is there anything else you can _tell_ me? About the guy I'm bunking with."

"Walks with a cane, faster than a bloody bat out of hell. Sharp mind and sharper tongue."

"Does he realize he's going to be sharing this space?" asks Newton, with a sense of foreboding.

"He knows the other room could rent out at any time," says Hansen, evasively. "You're it."

 _Jesus Christ_ , Newton thinks, sinking down on the sofa. _Nobody told him the Yank was coming._

No sooner than Hansen is out the front door with an envelope of Newton's hard-earned cash (enough to cover a stay up through the end of July), Newton flops down on the cushions and is out like a light within seconds.

He wakes several hours later, finds that he's still alone in the cottage and that it's gone dusk outside.

Groggily, he gets up and feels around the walls for a light-switch only to find that there _aren't_ any. That's when he notices candles and lamps placed at intervals; a quick inspection of the kitchen and bathroom faucets reveals that the water supply runs red for the first thirty seconds. He sniffs a palm-full, tastes it, and sticks out his tongue. Peat, rust, and something else he can't trace.

"This is gonna be a barrel of laughs," he mutters, and his stomach gives a pitiful growl.

Lacking anything better to do, he relocates his luggage to the unoccupied bedroom-slash-study, locks up, and heads in the direction of the Inn. There, at least, he'll be able to get a hot meal and start asking questions about local color. The boxes he'd shipped ahead containing his books, his microscope, and some other basic supplies probably won't arrive for another few days.

The Dores Inn is a cheerful, sprawling whitewashed building with a yard and some shrubbery out front. He ignores the entrance and walks the perimeter, finding the Loch-side terraced with some wooden benches along the water's edge. He stares at the last remnants of sunlight glinting off the windswept water and squints, adjusting his glasses. There's no monster _here_ , at least for now.

The interior is cozy, actually wired with electricity, and there are a respectable number of patrons seated at the various tables situated in nooks and crannies along the stone walls. He almost knocks into a lovely blonde serving girl in his quest for an empty seat; the only one he finds is at a table for two occupied by a vaguely scowling gentleman with reading spectacles who's engrossed in a book.

"I, uh," he says lamely, gesturing at the chair. "Do you mind if I sit here? You can keep reading."

The man glances at him with incisive dark eyes, scowl deepening. "Of _course_ I can keep reading."

"I meant while I eat," Newton clarifies, and it takes him a few moments to realize that the man isn't as old as he'd initially seemed; he's Newton's age, give or take a couple of years, and his angular features snag in such a way that Newton can't help staring. "I don't expect conversation."

The man heaves a sigh and gestures at the chair. "Nor should you," he sighs. "Sit down."

"I'm Newt," Newton offers, holding out his hand as he settles and scoots in. "Newton Geiszler. Not that it matters that much, but if we're gonna be sharing space in companionable silence—"

The man stares at Newton's hand as if it's personally offended him, but he gives it a brief shake.

"Where are you from?" he inquires curtly. "You sound American, but I detect a distinct edge—"

"Germany by way of New York," Newton says, watching the man's eyes drift back down to the pages. "It's a long story. Look, sorry," he prompts, "I don't think I caught your name—"

"Doctor Hermann Gottlieb," says the man, without looking back up. "Charmed, I'm sure."

 " _Oh_ ," says Newton, before he can clamp his mouth shut. "You're renting the other room."

At that, Gottlieb's eyes flick back up in alarm. "Which other room? Yes, I _am_ in fact renting here for the season, but it's presumptuous of you to surmise that you know which property—"

Newton screws his eyes shut and puts on his best _Don't hurt me!_ cringe. "We're, um," he says, swallowing, "look. I don't think Mister Hansen was straight with you. It just so happens—"

"Good _God_ ," Gottlieb seethes, and his tone is full of so much venom that Newton can't help but open his eyes just to see the expression that must accompany those words. "I shall be having a word with that thick-skulled Antipodean _twat_ the next time I see him, you can be _sure_ —"

"I won't interfere with your reading or research or whatever the hell it is you're doing up here," says Newton, swiftly, raising both hands just as the blonde server comes up to the table. "Honest. I won't even be indoors very much. In fact, I'm going to be, ah, doing some research of my own—"

"Your cottage pie, sir," says the girl, sliding a steaming dish onto the table next to Hermann's elbow. "What can I get for you, then?" she asks Newton in the same breath, offering a nervous smile.

Gottlieb hasn't even acknowledged the server. He's staring angrily at Newton, as if by sheer force of will he might cause him to blink out of existence. Newton clears his throat and looks at the girl.

"Do you have, uh, fish and chips?" he asks weakly. "What am I saying, sure you do. I'll have that."

The server nods and scurries away without even asking if Newton would like a drink, but given the furious scrutiny under which Newton finds himself squirming less comfortably with each passing second, it's all he can do to find the nerve to forge on with his half-baked self defense.

"Is that so?" Gottlieb asks, snapping his book shut and setting it aside. It's then that Newton notices the elegant, old-fashioned cane propped against the wall. "What _kind_ of research, dare I ask?"

The sheer _disdain_ in that statement gets right under Newton's skin. He no longer feels apologetic.

"I'm a paleontologist by trade," he says. "Well, technically a paleoicthyologist with background in biology—again, not that it makes any difference to _you_. I read the latest from Heuvelmans and thought it sounded, what's the word I'm looking for? _Keen_. He advocates for scientific rigor even in pursuit of creatures whose existences are as of yet unproved, so I'm out here to have a look—"

"Do you mean to tell me that my hard-won tranquility has been invaded by a—a _cryptid fanatic_?" Gottlieb demands, and that's when the reading glasses come off and holy hell is he _fucking terrifying_ but Newton finds that he _still can't look away_. "Do you honestly mean to say—"

 "That I'm looking for the Loch Ness monster, Jesus, are you deaf? That is _exactly_ what I'm saying!" Newton shoots back, heedless of how loudly he's saying it. "And, look, you're a fine one to talk. I had a snoop around the cottage and it seems to me from all those record slip-covers and rolling papers like I'm going to be holing up for the next few months with a chain-smoking _jazz fiend_!"

Gottlieb looks for a few seconds like he's going to burst a vein, but instead he lets out a long, hissing breath and settles back in his chair. "I'll have you know I do _not_ smoke indoors," he sniffs.

"Well, great," replies Newton, acidly, "because I don't smoke at _all_. That's a nasty habit, man."

"I'll thank you to keep your outmoded opinions to yourself," Gottlieb snaps, taking up his fork and jabbing it into the cottage pie. "For all I know, you've got—got far _worse_ addictions than mine."

"Sure," says Newton, unable to suppress a snicker. "Tea, India ink, and hardcore _math_. Yeah, that's it, don't look so shocked. I can see what you're reading. Where do you teach anyway, somewhere down south?" There's something in Gottlieb's over-the-top Britishness that's slightly off, something about the way he rolls the occasional _R_ that makes Newton think he's got something to hide.

"Saint Andrews," says Gottlieb. "That's _maths_ to you, which you wouldn't know if it bit you—"

"What did you say your given name is?" Newton asks, abruptly tapping the table. "Hermann?"

Gottlieb takes a single tense bite of cottage pie, and then dabs his lips furiously with a napkin.

"You will call me by my title and my surname," he insists. "We shall _not_ be making friends."

"Oh, I don't know about that," replies Newton, breaking into a wicked grin. That over-educated King's English crap now smacks of a second-language upbringing, and he's almost certain he's got this guy's number. " _W_ _ie geht's? Jetzt sind wir nicht mehr ganz so selbstgefällig, was?_ "

Gottlieb turns white as a sheet, takes a few more unhurried bites of his dinner before responding.

"I am not speaking to you any further," he announces primly. "Here comes your lamentable tripe."

"Right, of course you're not speaking to me," says Newton, nodding to the server. " _Hermann_."

 

*

 

They actually _do_ spend the next three days scarcely speaking to each other, which Newton finds bizarrely disheartening. His sleep schedule is shot to hell, the shower runs cold until five minutes before you're ready to step out, and the tall, mystifying iron wood stove in the kitchen needs constant tending (to which task Hermann does, indeed, see with an almost religious fervor).

Three mornings in a row, Newton finds a cup of lukewarm tea left for him on the side-table; whether it's a peace offering or a keep-your-distance offering, he isn't quite sure. He acquires a taste for it.

On the fourth night, just as Newton is settling down for what he assumes will be his first full night's sleep, Hermann clatters in from having had his habitual late dinner alone at the Inn and puts on one of his records. Newton wouldn't have minded Miles Davis nearly so much if he hadn't been trying to sleep—because _Walkin'_ is the _bomb_ , even his father and Uncle Illia know that. He bangs on the wall to what he thinks is no avail; about forty-five minutes later, once the record has played itself out, instead of Hermann sticking on a new one with which to torture Newton, silence falls.

The next morning, having overslept Hermann's departure for wherever it is he goes for most of the day, Newton burns his fourth pot of porridge on top of the stove, eats it anyway, downs his tea, and dresses for a walk to the post office.

His boxes are overdue, and he wonders if they're being held.

The kindly older gent at the window can't find anything of the sort in the back, so Newton thanks him and buys a few postcards in order to make change for the telephone box outside. Tendo had made him promise to call once he'd arrived, which had been weirdly touching, because, shit, not even Newton's dad and his uncle had demanded much more than a postcard in the first week.

After ten minutes of trying to get the goddamn contraption to take his money, Newton gives up and speaks to the operator. The woman doesn't seem impressed with the fact that he's trying to reach a Stateside number without enough funds to cover it, so Newton grits his teeth and tells her to reverse the charges. Tendo will probably threaten to kill him, but he won't refuse the call, either.

"Hey there, stranger," says Alison, in a pleasant turn of events. "Arrive safe and sound?"

"By the skin of my teeth," Newton admits, smiling at the bizarre and irritating _A_ and _B_ buttons built into the booth apparatus like they're suddenly his best friends. "This place is another planet, Al."

"Is the food as bad as people say it is?" she asks. "My parents couldn't eat _anything_ over there."

"Actually, no, I'm not finding that to be the case," replies Newton, shrugging. "I like fish and chips, cottage pie is tolerable, and the pub in question also does several passable variations on chicken."

"Have you tried haggis yet?" asks Alison, eagerly, at which point Dan exclaims, "Hi hi hi _hi_!"

"Hi, buddy," Newton says, grinning in spite of himself. "Somebody's figured out the phone."

"He's figured out all kinds of ways of knocking it off the cradle," sighs Alison. "He sits there and talks into it even when nobody's on the line. You'd think being an operator's his life's dream."

"Maybe he'd enjoy that, as social as he is," Newton says. "Hey, is your other half around?"

"Of course he is," Alison laughs. "It's six in the morning, so he's still asleep. Doesn't know the first thing about what this little man puts me through starting around four. Want me to wake him?"

Tendo pretends to be irritated and more than half asleep, but Newton can tell that he's eagerly eating up every word that comes out of his mouth. When he gets to the subject of Gottlieb, Tendo snorts.

"He's a total square," Newton says in awe. "Man, you should see him. What a _nerd_."

"Hate to break it to you, daddy-o," crackles Tendo over the line, "but _you're_ a nerd."

"That may be true, but I'm a _hip_ nerd," Newton corrects him. "There's a difference."

Tendo wraps up the call quick as you please when he realizes Alison has accepted the charges, so Newton heads back to the cottage with his three kitschy postcards and starts composing what he's going to jot on each. He's no sooner turned his key in the door and stepped inside, gracelessly bending to unlace his boots and kick out of them, when Gottlieb loudly clears his throat.

"You might consider leaving them on," he says, as if the words pain him. "The floor's cold."

Newton straightens up and wiggles his sock-covered toes against the flagstone. "I've put up with greater extremes in the field. You haven't experienced _cold_ till you've slept in a flimsy tent—"

"I have no desire to hear about your self-styled dashing shenanigans," sighs Gottlieb, and, of _course_ , he's half reclining on the sofa with one of those insufferably thick tomes open in his lap.

"You used the word _dashing_ , not me," Newton points out, and Gottlieb's scowl deepens. "Do you have even an ounce of respect for my discipline? Do you think we dig up old shit just for kicks?"

Gottlieb considers this for a moment, and he looks rather alarmed when Newton comes over to sit down on the opposite end of the sofa.

There's a good three feet of space between them, but Gottlieb looks as if he may consider this an even more egregious breach of privacy than Newton's candid observations. Newton finds it hopelessly endearing.

"I think that specimens in the field such as _yourself_ , as you put it, dig up old shit in order to compensate for a lack of intellectual rigor," Hermann says at length. "One can hardly succeed in disabusing me of this notion, what when taken in light of the ambition that has brought you _here_."

"Can I ask you something?" Newton shoots back. "Like, I mean an honest-to-God question with no sarcasm behind it, because you've used enough of _that_ for both of us already. Quota reached."

Snapping shut his book, Gottlieb studies at him with narrowed eyes. "Very well. What is it?"

"Don't you think it's presumptuous to assume that there aren't any wonders left on this planet?" Newton ventures, shocked to find that he's as nervous as the first day he set foot in the classroom in a role other than that of student. "Don't be an ass like Cuvier, man; let's look at this rationally for a second. Since the turn of the century alone, consider the legends and rumors that have become zoological fact. Nobody believed accounts of the okapi until partial remains were sent to London by Johnston in nineteen-oh-one—nobody in the _west_ , anyway. Morons. And that one's a pretty swell example of a living fossil, by the way, although not the best one I can think of, because—look, no, I'm _not_ gonna let you interrupt. Hear me out. Why don't we switch to critters that swim, since that seems to be your major bone to pick. Am I right about that? Large bodies of water, lakes and rivers, the ocean, what-have-you, are full of indeterminate weirdness. Sure. You can mistake the wake produced by a fish or a seal or—or _anything_ , really, for something that it's not. Currents, tricks of the light, distortion thanks to depth. Yeah, you're up against observational complications. That doesn't change the fact that it took us until nineteen-eighteen to figure out that there's a unique species of dolphins inhabiting the Yangtze, and you can't tell me it's _not_ amazing that we found proof back in thirty-eight that coelacanths still exist. Fucking _coelacanths,_ Hermann. Who's to say there isn't a monster, aren't monsters _plural_ , in Loch Ness? Monsters don't have to be ape-men or dinosaurs. Sometimes they're just deer or dolphins, and that's no less miraculous."

By the end of Newton's breathless tirade, Hermann is regarding him with an expression that's either vaguely impressed or desperately bored, and Newton cannot for the _life_ of him tell which. He's about to throw up his hands and leave the sofa in a huff when Hermann takes a halting breath.

"I can see that my insistence upon being addressed formally has fallen on deaf ears," he sighs, "so I'll accept a first-name basis within these four walls so long as you keep your yammering in check."

"Yammering, for real?" asks Newton, flabbergasted. "That's all you took away from what I said?"

Hermann's eyes flick away from Newton's face and consider the ceiling. "It's possible that I might have gleaned more if you'd provided sufficient context," he says with hesitation. "I do not, in fact, know who Cuvier is, nor am I familiar with the Johnston character you so blithely mentioned."

"This from a guy who dresses like he's still in the classroom when he's on goddamn vacation," Newton sighs, rising, and goes over to rummage in his shoulder bag, which he'd abandoned on the floor next to one of the chairs. He pulls out the two-volume set by Heuvelmans, _Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées_ , and drops the books on the sofa next to Hermann. " _Lisez_ - _vous français_ _?_ "

Hermann sniffs and mutters what sounds like _o_ _n holiday_ , but he recovers himself quickly and snatches the volumes with such contemptuous eagerness that Newton finds himself smiling. "Passably enough," he says, flipping pages. " _And_ some Dutch. This Heuvelmans chap, is he—"

"Belgian-French," Newton says, resuming his seat on the sofa. "Cuvier died in the nineteenth century."

"I shall give these a cursory glance," says Hermann, stiffly, shutting the volume. "As time permits."

With that, Hermann fetches his cane, adds his own book to the stack in his lap, and retires to his room. Newton spends a while just sprawling in his corner of the sofa with a stupid grin on his face; he isn't sure why he's so pleased at having just loaned two of his most prized possessions to a stuffy, numbers-obsessed madman. Strains of Herbie Nichols soon meet his ears, and that's all right, too.

With niggling reluctance, he retires to the desk in his own room and sets pencil to postcard. _Dear Tendo_ , he writes, _My initial assessment may have been incorrect. This guy isn't so much a square as completely and illogically fascinating, and I'm glad as hell you're not here to tell him I said that._

Another five days pass, in which they don't see much of each other, except for brief stints in the afternoon. They share dinner at the Inn on the fifth evening and narrowly avoid getting kicked out on account of a heated discussion regarding the soundness of further arguments and methodology put forward by Heuvelmans. They start arguing again on their way back to the cottage, although both of them stop mid-shout when they see the mountain of boxes someone's left on their doorstep.

"You said you'd sent yourself a _few_ books," Hermann hisses. "Not your whole bloody _office_."

"I never know what I'll need, all right?" Newton sighs, shoving just enough of the boxes aside so he can unlock the front door and get it open. "You don't have to help with these. Give me a minute."

It takes a lot of undignified grunting, lifting, and shoving, but Newton gets all four of the boxes to his room while Hermann stands in the grass impatiently watching. Overheated, Newton rolls his sleeves up to the elbow and undoes the top few buttons of his shirt; when he emerges into the common area, Hermann has finally come inside and appears to have forgotten how to blink.

"Aha," Newton says, realizing what's just happened. "I guess you've never seen these before."

Hermann is staring at his arms in morbid fascination. He blinks after about a minute, letting his eyes drift up to Newton's face, and his expression—God, but his face is a _mosaic_ of nuance—vacillates between instinctive distaste and barely concealed fascination. He goes with the latter.

"Do they—" he begins, cringing in partial apology "—do they, er, _extend_ so far—that is—?"

 _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , Newton thinks, and proceeds to undo the rest of his buttons.

Hermann's eyes go progressively wider, and Newton would be lying if he claimed not to be enjoying the act of challenging this uptight character's boundaries. His undershirt hasn't got sleeves, at least, so the intricately shaded blackwork that extends from his wrists to his shoulders is fully on display by the time he tosses his shirt on the sofa. Hermann is practically _ogling_ him.

"I added one for each species I found over about a decade," Newton explains, indicating the serpentine, skeletal _Elasmosaurus_ _platyurus_ wound around his left forearm. "Full remains, partial, it didn't matter. Where I didn't personally have full specimens from which to draw, I used ones in museums to fill in the gaps. This guy was just a skull and some vertebrae, for example," he says, holding up his right forearm to show off the _Cimoliasaurus laramiensis_ twisting there in parallel. "Goddamn Wyoming, man, there is _nothing_ for hundreds of miles. You'd probably love it." He points to the _Kronosaurus boyacensis_ wrapped around his upper left arm and grins at the empty-eyed skull where it rests emblazoned over the curve of his shoulder. "I got lucky on this one. We were funded well enough to do some poking around in Colombia; all I got was a dozen of her teeth, the right set of propodials, and some metapodials besides—uh. Flipper-bones. What about this little guy over here?" Newton asks, raising his right arm and flexing his bicep with cautious optimism. " _Shonisaurus_ , Nevada. We lucked out and got a near-complete skeleton, which saved my dissertation. Stop it with the looking like you're about to murder me, okay? It's unbecoming."

" _Unbecoming_?" Hermann sputters. "I'm not the one who's covered in—in veritable  _graffiti_!"

"Yeah, unbecoming," Newton repeats, folding his arms across his chest; he feels too exposed, suddenly, and far more vulnerable than he ought to feel with his proudest accomplishments on display. "I can't imagine why you insist on going around with a face like that and not—"

"A face like this and not what?" Hermann challenges, his features gone threateningly neutral.

"And not smiling," Newton finishes, because, damn, if he doesn't have a theory he'd like to test. "Have you ever looked in a mirror? I mean, sure, you must do it a lot, because you're way too fastidious to let anything as inconvenient as stubble set in, God forbid, so I have to assume—"

Hermann is, against all logic, responding just the way Newton had hoped he would. He's biting his lower lip even as his eyes crinkle a bit at the corners, helplessly, and his attempt at frowning fails.

"That's what I thought," says Newton, and his heart breaks a little, because his theory is correct.

Hermann's lips twitch, and the transformation is complete. "You? _Think_?" he quips. "Surely not."

When Hermann smiles, he's so unexpectedly, _improbably_ beautiful that Newton can't stand it.

 

*

 

It's almost late May by the time Newton gets all of his books and equipment unpacked, although, as far as he's concerned, he hasn't been wasting time. He's been talking to as many people as he can, locals and tourists alike, and Hermann acerbically observes one evening that there's not a single soul in all of Dores who doesn't know who he is. Newton says he doesn't mind in the least.

"Hermann, I have to tell you," he continues, dashing back into the kitchen to check progress on the meager supper he's got going for them. "I got this cool story today out of a guy and his daughter staying in one of the cottages about a mile up the road. You know _—_ the tall, serious-looking military type with the co-ed who either looks more like her mom than her dad or is adopted or something? Anyway, he told me they were out in a fishing boat by the ruins a couple of days ago—at Urquhart, right, the whole way across the Loch from here—and saw something odd and shadowy-shimmery going on about fifty yards out. My words, of course. Not his. I'm unsure what to make of that; none of the previous reports, and that's a lot of fucking reports, have covered anything quite like that. I don't think Nessie's supposed to shimmer, but she's often a shadow."

Newton hears Hermann sigh, get to his feet, and tap over to stand in the kitchen doorway. He turns from stirring what is undoubtedly a terrible attempt at a basic Madras curry containing potatoes, peas, and pulled-apart haggis, and considers Hermann where he's leaning on the threshold. He looks more thoughtful than disdainful, so Newton will count that as a minor victory.

"Maybe you ought to consider renting a boat yourself," he offers. "Hansen's son sees to that."

"That blond kid I see around town with a chip on his shoulder, yeah?" Newton ventures, sampling the near-burnt concoction, finding it almost too spicy for his own taste. "I'll tell you what, he seems like he's more trouble than he's worth. He bugs Mako a lot—that's the guy's daughter's name, isn't it? What's hilarious, though, is that there's this guy who's not much older and his kid brother backpacking their way through Scotland who put up a really good fight with him in the post office today. I about dropped the stuff I was there to send off. Mister McGilp kicked them all out."

"Miss Mori is familiar to me," says Hermann, quietly, "and her father, Admiral Pentecost, I know by sight. He collects her at the end of each term. She's an engineering student, will be entering her third year in the autumn, very bright. She's taken several of my seminars, and she even slips into lectures for which I haven't cleared her. The administration turns a blind eye, as well they should."

"Admiral?" Newton echoes, pulling the pot off the stove. "Royal Navy? He was in the War?"

"Submarine operations in the Pacific, as I understand it," Hermann sighs. "To render an arduous, unpleasant account in brief, she lost her family and was delivered into Pentecost's care. I know this because I've reviewed her academic profile. Under no circumstances let on that I've told you."

"Right, of course not," Newton says, ladling the dubious curry out into a pair of chipped, old-fashioned crockery bowls he's pulled down from the cupboard. "The way I see it, this doesn't count as a breach of confidentiality because you're sharing the information with a fellow academic colleague who's also concerned for her welfare. So, um, this is more of a stew than anything else, and I'm kind of afraid to eat it. Cooking is not a thing you do, and it's a thing I do only some of the time, so, if we're gonna die, we're at least taking your loose-lipped indiscretion to the grave."

Hermann snorts and accepts the proffered bowl after Newton's stuck one of the scratched, ancient spoons in it. "It cannot be worse than the few occasions on which I've attempted this myself."

"Do I really have no other choice than to deal with Chuck Hansen if I want to rent a goddamn boat?" Newton asks, cradling his own bowl as he trails after Hermann and then settles beside him on the sofa. There's a small dining table, but they've taken to using it as a shared additional desk.

"There are other rental outfits in the area, certainly, but you'd be going farther afield and paying twice as much," Hermann tells him, taking a bite of the curry, and his brow furrows. "You didn't add enough chilli," he remarks. "Otherwise, it's passable. Even, dare I say it, quite _original_."

"Score one for Geiszler," Newton remarks, grinning as he licks the back of his spoon. "Now all I've gotta do is get you to say something similar about my work, man, and my life will be complete."

"Don't get your hopes up, Newton," Hermann chides, but he's intent upon his dinner with an expression more content than Newton's ever seen. The use of his name is so understated that it slips in between them like warmth, a shared secret, the depths of which Newton can't begin to guess.

After eating, they argue over beers and jazz as to what Pentecost's shimmering shadow out in the water might have been; for Hermann's money, it's an algae bloom, but Newton isn't buying it, not the way Pentecost said it had moved. They're sleepy and slurred, leaning heavily against the sofa's high back, and when Newton starts awake it's bright, early morning outside and Hermann is gone, but there's tea waiting for him.

Rather than lukewarm, it's hot this time; the sweetness is perfect.

The boat house is a half-mile walk from the cottage, exercise for which Newton soon finds he's grateful. He's surprised to find the backpacking brothers there; they've clearly survived their second encounter with Chuck, because they've already got their boat out of the shallows and are making a shockingly good show of coordinated rowing in spite of the fact they've each got an oar.

"You might want to take turns!" Newton calls, waving. "You'll both tire if you continue that way!"

"Maybe most people would!" the older one calls back, grinning. "We've done it like this for years!"

"Yancy's so full of it!" shouts the younger one. "Ignore him, Doctor Geiszler! Find that monster?"

 "Not yet!" Newton replies, shading his eyes. "But I'm working on it! Tell me your name again?"

"Raleigh!" shouts the kid; it's then Newton realizes he's closer to Mako's age. "Raleigh Becket!"

"Oi, you lot! This isn't the fucking pub!" Chuck shouts, emerging from whatever task had absorbed him in the boat house since kitting out the Beckets. "You," he says, turning to face Newton, and replaces his herringbone tweed flat-cap at a ridiculous angle. "You're that lunatic out looking for a ghost, aren't you? I reckon that's what it must be by now, eh? Bloody ghost dinosaur, my arse."

"Look, all I want to do is rent a boat," Newton tells him, pulling out his wallet. "How much?"

"Lucky for you, Dad says he owes you one," replies Chuck, grudgingly. "Nothing for now."

"I don't understand," says Newton, staggering a bit under the weight of the oar he's handed, and then follows the line of Chuck's pointing down to the water's edge. There's a boat with a single oar tethered there with a handful of others, and it appears to be in seaworthy, if weathered shape.

"He said something about chewing your ear off with tales from the Old Country," says Chuck, shrugging, and narrows his eyes at Newton. "Seems to me you're the foreigner, though, and I don't mean American like those jokers out there. At least Doctor Gottlieb has the good sense to hide—"

"On the contrary, I hide nothing," says Hermann, ambling down from the shoulder of the road; Hansen hadn't been lying about how fast he is, because he's covered more ground in just a few seconds than Newton would have ever thought possible. "By your own logic, I'm just as British as you are, young man, and I'll thank you to remember as much. You're off, then, Doctor Geiszler?"

Newton's knee-jerk reaction to hearing Hermann call him by something other than his first name, after last night, is a momentary stab of betrayal. But there's something in the way Hermann's giving him this twisted, indulgent half-smile that Newton recognizes as the equivalent of a wink.

 "Yep," he confirms, walking down to the boat, fitting the oar in place. He's so annoyed at Chuck that he decides to go for broke, making a potentially anti-Semitic enemy be damned. " _Ich komme wahrscheinlich erst spät zurück, Sie müßen wohl ohne mich eßen. Sind Sie sicher, daß sie nicht mitkommen wollen? Wir könnten danach in die Kneipe gehen._ "

" _Nein, aber danke_ ," responds Hermann, his tone curiously kind, and Newton supposes there really is something to this hyper-formal mode of communication on which he insists in public. "I've worn myself out with walking, I fear, and would therefore be useless at the oars. Until later."

Chuck makes an unreadable face at them and wanders back to whatever he'd been doing previously.

Newton watches Hermann stroll leisurely back up to the road even as he struggles to get the boat out into open water; for all of his moderately passable upper-body strength, rowing has never been his strong suit, and it's a laughable couple of hours before he feels like he's got the hang of it. His shoulder bag is damp, although the contents don't seem to have come to harm, and so he spends another couple of hours just drifting out in the middle of placid nothingness and watching the water. He doesn't come across any threatening shadows or any patches of unaccountable shimmer, although the Becket boys row past a few times and proudly hold up strings of trout.

He's sore, tired, and in a generally unpleasant mood when he gets home, although he's saved a few strands of water-weed that had got caught on his oars during the journey, because, damn it, he's got to use the microscope for _something_. It's nearly seven o'clock when he's finally within sight of the cottage, and he's surprised to see Hermann out front with a cigarette that is, judging from the tiny pile of filters next to him on the porch, not his first meticulously-rolled fag of the evening.

"Hey, shouldn't you be eating?" Newton asks as he approaches. "I hear it takes the edge off."

"There was no sense in going alone," he mutters, stubbing it out. "I fear I've lost my taste for silence. If I knew what a dreadful influence you'd prove in that regard, I'd have never let you share my table in the first place. If I hadn't been so tired, truly, I would have gone out there with you."

"Why?" Newton asks, grinning in spite of himself, and his pulse spikes painfully at the sight of Hermann planting his cane with a grimace in order to pull himself up. Without thinking, Newton surges forward and catches his hand, his arm, his shoulder, tugging him closer in the endeavor than he'd intended. He's looking into Hermann's sharp, searching eyes at close range, and the effect is catastrophic. So far, his feelings for this man are equal parts fascination, fondness, and frustration; denying that Hermann's devastatingly attractive in the most unconventional way possible is _useless_.

"Because I don't trust you to know your way around a rowboat, for starters," says Hermann, and the spell is at least partially broken. "And because that friend of yours at home would never have forgiven me if you manage to fall in and drown. Yes, Newton. I've been reading your post."

"Well, it's mostly postcards," replies Newton, shrugging, and lets go of him with reluctance. "Difficult to carry those in without noticing what's on them. I forgive you. How about dinner?"

"Are you proposing to cook, or does your offer of earlier still stand?" Hermann asks slowly.

"It's gotta be the Inn, man," Newton sighs. "I'd love to cook for you again, but we've got nothing left after last night. There's no refrigeration unit in here, not even an icebox, so I'd have to be shopping on a day-to-day basis. Or one of us would have to be doing that, at any rate."

"We could designate dining-in and dining-out days," Hermann says. "For now, let's go."

Newton tries not to think too hard about the fact that their grudging mutual-hate-and-fascination-klatsch is turning fast into a situation where his emotions—or his loneliness and his libido, in the very least—are severely compromised. They argue over dinner about rowing competency and the merits of taking up fishing so as to keep food costs down, albeit quietly, and a bottle of scotch for dessert sees them leaning on each other for the entirety of the walk home. Newton feels like he ought to kiss Hermann on the cheek as he leaves him at the threshold of his room, but doesn't.

He's grateful for the swells of jazz from the other side of the wall as he whimpers into his pillow. His hand isn't Hermann's, will never be Hermann's, but he thinks of Hermann's disarming smile and Hermann's arm curled loose and tipsy around his waist and, groaning helplessly, comes.

Newton avoids Hermann for the next few days insofar as he's able; dinner has become non-negotiable, an experience that they share for better or for worse, and Hermann seems all too enthusiastic about Newton's pathetic attempt at doctoring canned spaghetti sauce ( _tinned_ , Hermann insists, but he lets it slide once he's had a taste) for dumping over mushy pasta shells.

"You haven't had much luck, have you?" Hermann asks, flicking ash at the sky once they're seated on the edge of the porch afterward. "No trace of that shadow, nothing unusual or noteworthy?"

"Not a trace," Newton sighs, surprising even himself by reaching over to snatch the cigarette from between Hermann's elegant fingers. He takes a drag on it and sighs, closing his eyes, and doesn't cough until he's released the entire breath. "You're right. We should start fishing; it'll keep costs down, and it'll make me feel less awful for wasting time on a thing that doesn't want to be seen."

"Two pairs of eyes are better than one," replies Hermann, hesitantly. "In the unlikely event that there is anything to see, you'll be more likely to turn up results with another party present."

"Tomorrow, then," says Newton, and claps a companionable hand on Hermann's knee before he loses his nerve. It's too tempting to reach, to sound out Hermann's boundaries in the guise of companionable contact. So far, Hermann has shown no signs of shying from Newton's touch.

"Tomorrow," Hermann says, awkwardly lifting a hand, which only manages to brush the back of Newton's as he withdraws it. The gesture is nebulous, fragile, and inconclusive; nonetheless, the contact sends shivers down Newton's spine. In lieu of a kiss, he craves another drag on the cigarette (which has so lately touched Hermann's lips), and so he reaches again and reverently takes it.

 

 *

 

 The next day marks the arrival of June, and with it comes torrential rain. They don't go fishing.

 Things are quiet and awkward again for a few days after that, and this time, it's Hermann who's withdrawn.  Newton's taken to keeping the boat tethered on the shore next to the cottage, because if they're going to be regularly using it, he prefers the convenience. Chuck continues to refuse payment, muttering something about it having been paid up by a mysterious benefactor.

The rain persists for a week, so Newton studies sample after sample under his microscope and finds nothing incongruent to the Loch's ecosystem as he understands it. By the end of their second week in rainstorm-enforced confinement, Hermann has taken to hovering in Newton's doorway and asking prickly, yet conscientious questions about Newton's findings. When he's not doing that, he's sitting on his end of the sofa scribbling indecipherable theorems in his notebook, so Newton puts on the kettle and brings him a cup of tea for every time Hermann's left it for him.

"I'm going to the Inn," Newton tells him one evening, just as the rain appears to be subsiding. "You refused lunch, and you've had nothing today but tea and smokes, Hermann. Come eat with me?"

As much as Hermann looks like he desperately wants to do that, he shifts where he's sitting, grimaces in genuine pain, and halts the scratch of his pencil on the page. "You go on," he replies, waving Newton in the direction of the door. "Still a bit stiff, I'm afraid. There's a tin of beans and some crusts in the breadbox, so I'll manage. Bring back any choice bits of gossip, please; you know by now that I do so enjoy the petty, revolving dramas that wrack this town from year to year."

He looks so tired of being cooped up that Newton just wants to bundle him into a raincoat, shower him with kisses, and drag him out the door. He imagines Hermann perched behind him on the bike he's been using for longer hauls around the Loch, Hermann's arms wrapped tight around his waist, and has to bite his lip to keep from shouting, _I'm falling in love with you, you bastard! Let me in!_

What he says instead is, "Sure. No problem. I won't be long, and I'll bring you something."

Hermann looks up from his resumed scribbling, apparently touched. "Thank you, Newton."

Newton leaves before he has the chance to make a fool of himself. The walk is brief, but damp and unpleasant, so he sustains himself with visions of kissing Hermann breathless on the stupid sofa.

He feels hazy on arrival at the Inn, uncoordinated, and he drops his raincoat several times before he manages to successfully hang it on one of the pegs next to the entrance. The place is packed, but then, he shouldn't be surprised; it's a drizzly Friday evening, and Hermann is entirely too correct about the interpersonal dramas blossoming around them. He shouldn't find it riveting, but it _is_.

Just to Newton's left, Raleigh and Mako Mori are talking in close, low tones over one of the tables for two tucked up against the wall; meanwhile Yancy is sipping scotch at the bar and doing an excellent job of chatting up Emma, the blonde server. It's impossible not to recognize that _his_ drama, his and Hermann's, must unfold behind closed doors. The unfairness of it stings.

Not that long after the proprietor has warmly greeted Newton and settled him at another of the tables along the wall with a pint that he insists is on the house ("Monster hunting's thirsty business, lad," he'd said, and gone off to place Newton's order for two cottage pies), Hansen and his son make a noisy entrance and situate themselves a few seats down from Yancy at the bar. Newton keeps a low profile, in no mood for an encounter with either one—never mind how much he likes Herc.

He's pleased with how uneventful his dinner is panning out in spite of the fact that microcosmically momentous things are happening around him, so much so that an audible turn in the Hansens' conversation at the bar catches him by surprise mid-swallow. He's scarcely avoids choking.

"S'funny, though, the way he paid up the rest of the boat rental like that and then told me not to go telling Geiszler who did it," Chuck mutters into his pint. "That's funny business, if you ask me."

"If you consider kindness _funny business_ , then I don't know who bloody well raised you," Herc replies, and, out of the corner of his eye, Newton can't help but notice that he looks ready to smack Chuck upside the head. "Sure as hell can't have been me, and your mum taught you better."

"Don't tell me you haven't noticed it," Chuck persists, lowering his voice only a fraction. "Everybody's favorite Nessie freak does the shopping and mailing for both of 'em like he's Gottlieb's goddamn _wife_." He glances around the room and then adds in a loud whisper, "You know what the law has to say about it, Dad. Remember that English bloke in the papers last year?"

"What happened to that poor sod, what with his contributions to the War effort and all, ought not to be mocked, so if you don't shut your goddamn _mouth_ —" Herc cuts off mid-sentence, glancing sidelong across the room at Newton, and offers him a friendly wave. "Good evening, Newt!"

Newton nods in response, but he can't bring himself to return the greeting as Chuck regards him with an undisguised mix of anxiety and disgust. He stares at what's left of his cottage pie, no longer all that hungry, and waves Emma over to wrap it up for him as she'd done with Hermann's. Herc gets off his stool, comes over to stand next to Newton's table once she's carried the plate away.

"Listen, mate," Herc says, sliding into the chair across from Newton, "I don't want you to think—"

"I don't care what people think," replies Newton, curtly, cradling Hermann's already packaged dinner in his lap. "I know what happened to Professor Turing, and I agree with you. What, you look kind of surprised? Like maybe we don't hear about your news across the pond? I don't know about the rest of the country, but I can tell you it made waves in the circles I run with. _Big ones_."

Herc looks down at his hands folded against the table. "C'mon, stay for another pint. My treat."

Chuck hides his face in his hands and then pretends to be interested in challenging Yancy over Emma's affections, and, who knows, maybe he genuinely _is_. Newton hates the kid so much right now that he'd smack him upside the head with one of his own oars given half the chance.

"Thanks, but I don't think I should," Newton says, waving to Emma as she extracts herself from the advances of both young men and brings Newton's leftovers to the table with relief. Newton takes the parcel and presses some coins into her palm. "Don't let them walk all over you," he tells her, rising with his arms full, and Herc finds the tabletop abruptly interesting. "You're not obliged."

"No, of course not," she says, clutching the tip to her chest, stands straighter and taller in her low-heeled shoes. "I know that. Have a good evening, Newt, and tell Doctor Gottlieb I missed him."

"I'll do that," Newton says, and, with a nod to Herc, collects his raincoat and leaves.

When he gets back to the cottage, every light in the place seems to have gone out, and the common space is silent, so Newton sets down the food parcels and spends a good few minutes re-lighting lamps and candles. Hermann, thrown into sharp, shadowy relief, yawns and stretches on the sofa, clearly having fallen asleep right where Newton had left him. He stretches, wincing, and sets his book aside.

Newton collects their take-away from where he'd set it, fetches a pair of forks from the kitchen, and then comes back to sit beside him. They settle so close that their thighs almost touch.

"It's not cold yet, but it's not hot anymore, either," he says apologetically. "Sorry about that. Emma McGilp said she missed you, so your charming presence is obviously of value to the wait-staff."

Hermann sets about unpackaging his dinner and acknowledges Newton's revelation with one of those put upon lip-twists that's not quite a smile. "It's only that I tip them generously, I'm sure."

"I tipped her for you," Newton reassures him, finding the remainder of his dinner much more appealing now that Hermann is beside him. "Maybe not quite as much as you would have done, but more than I usually do when I'm alone. Have I mentioned the currency here is indecipherable?"

They settle back against the sofa, shoulder to shoulder, and have a thorough argument on the subject of United States currency versus United Kingdom currency, user-friendliness thereof. Once they've finished eating, Hermann gets up in the middle of another tiresome, _adorable_ tirade, puts on one of his records, and comes back with the remainder of their bottle of scotch. Newton matches him shot for shot till they've each had six in quick succession. He feels warm, and the song sounds familiar.

 _Give me your word_  
_Your love will never die_  
_Give me your word_  
_You'll feel the same as I_  
_My heart will beat a lifetime just for you_  
_That's all it wants to do_  
_If yours is just as true_

"This is Tennesee Ford's _Give Me Your Word_ , isn't it?" he asks. "Didn't know he was popular here."

"Popular enough," Hermann agrees, setting his glass down. "It's not jazz, but I don't mind terribly."

"Man, you _own the record_ ," Newton says, turning to face him. " _Minding_ is not the right term here."

Hermann sniffs and, improbably, leans closer. "If you must know," he confesses, "It's _romantic_."

 _Why don't you_  
_Give me your lips_  
_And let your lips remain_  
_Give me your word_  
_I'm not in love in vain_  
_Give me one hope to guide me_  
_One vow you'll be beside me always_  
_Give me your word_

"Yeah," Newton agrees, far too tipsy to overanalyze the situation, and lets his head loll against Hermann's shoulder. Hermann stiffens, as he startles easily when he's under the influence, but it takes him only a few seconds to mutter and shift and awkwardly work his arm around Newton's shoulders. Newton closes his eyes and huddles close; if this is all he ever gets, one drunken cuddle, he'll count himself the luckiest man alive. "If the weather holds, we should go fishing tomorrow. I hate eating down there; people _stare_ , Hermann. They really don't find me cute anymore."

"Then if you don't like it," slurs Hermann, resolutely, "we shall endeavor henceforth to eat _in_." His breath is a comforting, boozy rush against Newton's forehead, and when Hermann's lips plant there in a sloppy and uncoordinated kiss, Newton curls closer into him and throws his arm across Hermann's waist. "As for the latter claim, I can hardly . . . " Hermann takes a deep, shaky breath, and Newton clings to him for all he's worth. "I can hardly endorse such misguided thinking."

 _Give me your lips_  
_And let your lips remain_  
_Give me your word_  
_I'm not in love in vain_  
_Give me one hope to guide me_  
_One vow you'll be beside me always_  
_Give me your word_

They don't speak further, and Newton falls asleep to the sensation of Hermann's fingers in his hair.

It isn't the necessarily the weirdest, most awkward morning he's had waking alone on the sofa, but the circumstances which have led up to it are, nonetheless, the most vividly _memorable_. Newton groans and rubs his eyes; his head hurts fiercely (that'll have been mixing beer and hard liquor), and there's a terrible crick in his neck. He smells something familiar and notices a cup of tea waiting on the table.

It's colder than he usually finds it, but it's all he has of Hermann at this moment, so he drinks it down in greedy swallows. Goddamn him, always stepping out without leaving a note—

"Good morning, Newton," says Hermann, too brightly for how wretched Newton feels, and clatters in through the door with a wicker basket that Newton can only presume holds some shopping. "I thought we might take a break after this morning's expedition and have a picnic at the ruins, what do you think?" He pauses to set down the basket, stepping closer, and frowns at Newton.

"Oh, you poor _dear_ ," he croons, although it's obvious he's trying not to laugh. "Have a shower, why don't you, and then we'll see how you feel. Honestly, do you even _know_ the meaning of moderation?"

"No more than you do when you're doing your chimney impression," Newton grumbles, wincing as he staggers to his feet. "Thanks for the tea. All of it, I mean. Yeah, a picnic would be . . . " Newton searches for the word he wants and miserably shakes his head. " _Ugh_. Right. Shower."

They do venture out once Newton is clean and dressed, although the sun hurts his eyes and exacerbates the headache, so Hermann insists upon rowing the first leg of the journey. Newton spends their journey to the far shore of the Loch preparing the fishing rods; he would have preferred live bait to lures, but he's not sure where he would have gotten some on such short notice.

Three hours later, Hermann has caught three trout and Newton has caught two. They thread the trout on some line and leave them trailing from the boat in the shallows while they tether the boat and head up to the ruins arm in arm with their basket dangling from Newton's free hand.

Newton is glad of Hermann's cane only in the sense that it gives him sufficient excuse to touch Hermann in public without anyone asking questions. They're alone in the grassy expanse of Urquhart's interior—except for Mako and Raleigh, who are doing a terrible job of concealing themselves beneath the tower while they kiss like furtive teenagers in the sunshine.

"I think they know we've seen them," remarks Hermann, dryly, settling on the spread blanket while Newton goes about picking apart their neatly-packed spread. "So what you said is true."

"They also know we're not the kind of guys who'll tell on them," replies Newton, constructing a pair of cheese-and-pickle sandwiches with as much care as he can muster. " _I'm_ not, at least."

"I have no interest in interfering with my students' lives so long as they're not in danger," Hermann says, gratefully accepting one of the sandwiches. "Heaven knows I wouldn't have survived long if any of my professors had been inclined to expose _my_ particular youthful indiscretions."

Newton raises his eyebrows and swallows a bite of his sandwich. "What, _you_? Really?"

Hermann lowers his eyes and reaches for one of the apples between them on the blanket, turning it pensively in his grasp. "I'm sure I need not tell you the reason," he says quietly. "You'll have figured it out by now, Newton, as clever as you are, and _especially_ after the events of last night. I fear I permitted circumstances to get quite out of hand. Thank you for keeping my secret."

Newton can't bring himself to immediately respond; whether it's the fact that Hermann has called him clever or the fact that Hermann is acknowledging his _very_ clear romantic proclivities or the fact that he _doesn't seem to realize Newton shares them_ , he can't say. He's about to open his mouth and take that impossible, potentially devastating leap when Hermann looks up with a sense of urgency.

"There's something I've been meaning to ask you, but finding the right moment has been difficult," he says, and Newton wonders if Hermann is about to save him the trouble. "It's to do with your family," he says carefully, polishing the apple on his waistcoat. "In what year did they—leave?"

Newton stares down at his hands, realizing that _this_ conversation, too, is one that's far overdue, so he might as well let it happen before trying to untangle his half of the other one. "We left Berlin in nineteen thirty-three," he says, relieved. "The situation wasn't as bad as it was going to get, of course, but who _actually_ thought it was going to go as far as it did? Certainly not my father and my uncle, let alone _me_. That’s why we didn't press my mother to come with us. She'd left when I was six, but we knew her whereabouts every step of the way. Monica Schwartz—are you familiar with that name? She was an opera singer. You can still find recordings in junk shops if you're lucky."

Hermann sucks in his breath, staring at the apple as if he no longer knows what to do with it.

"I am so very, _very_ sorry," he says softly, "for your loss. And I will not ask _how_ , unless—"

" _Kristallnacht_ ," Newton tells him, setting aside what's left of his sandwich. "She was shot during one of the riots, or at least that's what a letter from one of her cousins told us. She was passionate, my dad's always saying, and very, _very_ rash. He says I'm like her. Says _I'd_ have been out there."

"Then your mother was more fortunate than mine, to have got a bullet instead of—" Hermann pauses, overcome, and Newton takes the apple away from him without thinking; his fingernails have bit precise, vicious arcs into its red flesh. Once Newton has Hermann's hands clasped firmly between his own, Hermann takes a breath and collects himself, lifting his chin.

"We didn't leave Bavaria _until_ thirty-eight," Hermann explains. "How utterly foolish of my father—to have failed to relocate the family sooner than that, to have believed that violence wouldn't reach the south! We all got out in one piece, my parents and my siblings and I—at least the first time. Once we'd been established in London for six months, my mother was determined to go back. She feared for her brother's safety; she refused to leave him trapped in München, and she wrote several times within weeks of arrival there. After that, there was nothing further by her hand, but records uncovered after the fact would suggest that both of them were transported to Dachau."

Newton can't think of a response, so he draws Hermann's hands up to his mouth and murmurs the only prayer he knows. The moment is fragile, half-suspended: anyone watching in that instant might choose to draw a hostile conclusion, anyone at _all_ , but when their eyes meet and Hermann turns one of his hands to rest it against Newton's face, he doesn't fear for them, not anymore.

It's Mako's excited shriek that causes them to break apart, that and Raleigh rushing after her up to where Newton and Hermann are sitting stock-still on a blanket with their meal mostly uneaten.

"Newt, it's there!" she shouts, breathless and beckoning. "What my father and I saw! _Quick_!"

Hermann starts to tug them to their feet before Newton can think twice. Newton takes hold of Hermann's arm, and they leave Hermann's cane behind, rushing after the two young people in order to get a better view of the water. Fifty yards out, right where they'd been casting their lines, Newton sets eyes on the shadow full of glints and glimmers hovering beneath the wind-fraught waves.

"That's the weirdest thing," Raleigh says. "Yancy and I hadn't seen _squat_. Wait till I tell him."

Hermann taps Newton's arm. "We ought to go out there," he hisses. "We ought to go _now_!"

Newton shakes his head, watching the dark patch as it moves, transfixed, and strokes the back of Hermann's hand. Mako and Raleigh are too busy shading their eyes against the sunset to notice.

"Tomorrow," he says. "I'll take the boat out there tomorrow. Right now, we have a picnic to finish."

Hermann nods, lacing their fingers together; meanwhile, Mako turns, beaming at them, and winks.

 

*

 

As much as Newton would have liked to have taken Hermann home and explained why they are, in no uncertain terms, _never_ going to fail to share a bed again, getting Mako and Raleigh back across the Loch so as to prevent them from hitching a ride after dark has taken priority.

The boat is cramped, what with four adults and a picnic basket now holding five dead trout wrapped in a plastic bag, but two of said adults have squeezed themselves into as little space as possible.

Newton shoots frequent glances over his shoulder at Hermann as he rows, more amused than he ought to be by the canoodling that's happening at the far end of the boat. At one point, when he falters at the oars, tiring, Hermann sets a hand between Newton's shoulder blades and gently rubs.

"We're gonna have to eat these fast," Newton remarks once they've finally reached the shoreline next to the cottage. Raleigh leaps out first and fishes the tether out of the shallows, wading back out to tie it to the boat. Newton thanks him and climbs out, helping him haul the vessel till it's run aground on gravel and sand. Mako climbs out and offers Hermann her hand; he gracefully accepts.

"Why don't you stay for supper?" Hermann offers, taking his cane from Raleigh once the young man has fetched that, the basket, and the blanket. "There's more than enough to go around, and Newton's a much better cook than he'll admit. We have fruit and bread, too, but not much else."

"What if your dad comes looking for you?" Raleigh asks Mako, nervously. "Will he be pissed?"

"Not if we save him a fish," says Mako, smiling, and turns back to Hermann. "Yes, we'll stay."

While Newton is busy working out the logistics of gutting trout with Raleigh's enthusiastic assistance and wondering if any of the various rag-tag pots, pans, or casserole-dishes will even be up to the task of cooking fish on top of a cantankerous-as-fuck stove, Mako and Hermann vanish for about thirty minutes. By the time they return with two packs of beer and a bottle of wine, Newton and Raleigh have shoved the fish into one of the larger, flatter pots with some olive oil, garlic, and rosemary. When Admiral Pentecost strides in behind them, Raleigh goes white as a sheet.

The fish isn't so bad when all is said and done; the skin has stuck to the pot, and some of it's burnt, but they manage to flake out enough tender white flesh for everyone to sample along with their bread and butter or cheese-and-pickle sandwiches. Stacker is stern, that's true, but he's good company, and he surprises Newton by drinking two half-glasses of wine. Newton and Hermann see off their guests two hours later, both of them nearly as intoxicated as they'd been the night before.

"Raleigh's got it bad for her," Newton remarks, staggering as he closes the door after them. "I mean, man— _really_ bad. Good thing she's just as smitten. Her dad wouldn't have been so friendly."

Hermann takes hold of Newton's arm to steady him, turning the gesture smoothly into a spin so that they're facing each other from as close as they'd been the other evening after smoking on the porch.

"About what I said earlier," he murmurs thickly, reaching to remove Newton's glasses with one hand. "You were about to say something in response, I think, and I foolishly cut you off."

"You asked about my _family_ , Hermann," Newton sighs, taking the glasses away from him and setting them aside on the nearest surface, which happens to be an arm of the sofa. "It was relevant. Shit, it was _more_ than relevant. There's only so far you can go without saying stuff until—"

Hermann leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Newton's lips, close-mouthed and chaste.

"I'd ask you to sleep on it before you respond rashly," he murmurs. "I won't have you taking a risk, Newton. Won't have you rushing in simply because you think you have no other choice."

Newton blinks at him, dumbfounded, and reaches for Hermann even as he steps away.

"Listen," he pleads, "this isn't—that is, listen to me, I'm _sure_. If you knew what I've—"

Hermann takes Newton's hand and kisses it, lingering over the knuckle of his index finger.

"Good night," he says as firmly as he can. "Tomorrow. After your expedition, when you're sober."

"Aren't you coming with me?" asks Newton, his tone too plaintive for his own ears. "Hermann?"

"I should like the time to think myself," he says, advancing unsteadily into his room. "Rest assured that it's not because I intend to change my mind. I couldn't if I wished it, not even if I were to try."

Newton passes a miserable night; although he falls asleep quickly, his alcohol-addled dreams are restless, haunted. His muscles are stiff and sore from rowing, and he's exhausted. He doesn't wake until just past noon, by which point Hermann has already departed for his habitual rambling and reading afield. The cup of tea that Newton finds waiting is cold, but there's a note tucked under it.

  _Do me the pleasure of returning by seven_ , it reads. _Dinner at eight. Allow me to return the favour after all these weeks, pitiful though the result may be. Yours most sincerely, Hermann._

"Mine," he sighs, downs the tea, and then goes to take a long shower. "You'd better be."

He doesn't set out with his fine-weave fishing net and motley collection of empty glass jars until almost four o'clock. He rows slowly, partly out of discomfort and partly because he's zigzagging his way across the Loch rather than making a straight trajectory; he needs to cover as much open water as he can in order to maximize his chances of finding what he suspects is out there.

All of his prodding at sliced-up weeds and infinitesimally small fauna on carefully-prepared slides has paid off; from what he's observed of both weather and water conditions this summer, it's _possible_.

It's near six-thirty, drifting as he is within sight of the ruins and almost nodding off, when Newton thinks he catches sight of the elusive shadow at least a hundred yards up-current. He's already not going to make it back at seven on the dot, and Hermann is probably going to be _livid_.

He rows with determination nonetheless: he's got a few test-trawls to perform and then jars to fill if his suspicions become reality. He's just about reached the site when ominously strong wind whips up, the clouds overhead roiling with what looks like another fierce storm. He stops rowing, swears, and dips his net. The mess he deposits in the bottom of the boat turns up weeds, detritus, and—

" _Jackpot_ ," Newton says, and fumbles the lid off the nearest jar. He won't be able to salvage most of what's in the bottom of the boat, but he drops a handful of the slimy mess into the jar anyway before filling it the rest of the way with water. He does this with three of the six, and then fills the remaining three by filling them directly from the water as deep as his arm will let him reach.

He spends an hour at the task, turning the jars in the falling light and squinting in pleased wonder, which turns out to be a huge mistake. The wind is fiercer now, and rain is beginning to soak the remainder of his clothing that _wasn't_ already soaked as a result of his jar-filling efforts.

It's just before eight-thirty, and Hermann must be pacing a rut right through the flagstone.

The return journey takes forty-five minutes in reasonable conditions, but the ones Newton is now rowing against with all of his pained, pathetic strength are anything _but_. The rain is merciless, not quite torrential, and keeping his glasses clear is an impossible task. The thought of Hermann worrying in earnest is intolerable; through all of his soaked, panicked exertions he presses on.

He's convinced it's more luck than anything else that leads him to the right pinpoint of light along the increasingly less distant shore. He's going to be in agony for days once the adrenaline wears off, but that prospect is outweighed by his sheer relief at having found something worth studying.

Taking the butt of an oar across his left eye and up to scrape his temple in his haste to clamber out and tether the vessel certainly isn't his proudest moment, but he'll cut his losses and leave the jars right where they are for the moment as long as it means Hermann is _waiting for him_ —

Newton staggers, soaked and vaguely aware that he's bleeding, around to the cottage entrance, and he's scarcely raised his fist to land his first hesitant, cringing knock when the door swings open.

"Oh," Hermann whispers, backlit pale and fearful by his host of lamps and candles, " _oh_ , thank heavens you're safe, but what in God's name have you _done_? Newton, don't just _stand_ there! You're hurt, this is unbelievable, come along, you've got to get _out_ of those—"

He's rambling and tugging Newton inside by the hand, and it's not till the front door is safely shut behind them and Newton's being forced to sit down, soaked and shaking, on top of the toilet seat while Hermann examines the puffy flesh around his eye and the cut on his temple with a candle held up far too close that he manages to draw breath sufficient to choke out a laugh and respond.

"I found something," he says, triumphant, and jabs a finger at Hermann's chest as soon as Hermann comes back from the sink with a clean rag that's been soaked in witch hazel. "I— _scheiße_ , what the hell, Hermann, that _stings_!—told you I was going to find something. I might not have a goddamn plesiosaur on a leash or anything like that, but as soon as it's light out, just wait till you see—"

"I am _not_ interested in whatever you've got stowed in the bloody boat," Hermann growls, dabbing at the laceration a few more times before moving back over to rummage in the cupboard. He comes back with some salve and a plaster, which he applies with ruthless efficiency.

Once finished, he tilts Newton's chin up with both hands, and Newton looks at him, _really_ looks at him, which takes some doing since his glasses are sitting, drippy and bent, on the porcelain edge of the sink.

"I fucked up, didn't I," he says quietly, because Hermann's expression is too painful to bear.

"I should think not," says Hermann, his tone forgiving. "Unless you _knew_ that storm was coming, I should think that there's no reason whatsoever that I ought to blame you for having got stuck in it, what when you were doing precisely what you'd set out to do. I should have gone _with_ you."

"I didn't know, for what it's worth," says Newton, slowly, and bends down to tug the sodden laces of his boots undone. Pulling out of them is an arduous task; he'll have blisters, too, and won't _that_ be a riot on top of everything else? He peels off his socks and stands, dizzily swaying.

"What can I get you?" asks Hermann, softly, brushing Newton's cheek. "You're _freezing_."

The kiss is awkward, what with Hermann almost losing his balance out of sheer dismay and Newton almost losing his balance as a result of shivering so hard he can't stand unaided. Hermann's cane clatters noisily to the floor, startling them both, but Hermann opens his mouth with a gasp and tugs Newton forward. Newton swallows hard and presses up against him, wet clothes and all.

"Oh, darling," sighs Hermann, with a fierce nod, and holds him tight. "I thought you'd never ask."

What happens next is part seduction and part making sure Newton doesn't succumb to hypothermia, but Hermann is both relentlessly capable and tender beyond _belief_. Newton lets himself be stripped of his shirt and rubbed down, marches forward obediently when Hermann wraps him in the towel and guides him out of the bathroom and toward Hermann's invitingly open bedroom door.

Hermann presses him to sit on the edge of the bed, but not before unbuttoning Newton's jeans and splaying one graceful hand low against his belly to caress, to hook careful fingers beneath the waistband of his shorts and turn them to deftly stroking.

Newton collapses onto the edge of the mattress because his legs will no longer support him. Hermann follows him, kneeling, and tugs down both soaked jeans and under-things until Newton has no hope of hiding save for the towel.

"I didn't count on looking like a drowned rat for this," he says, flustered at the state of his hair and how badly his arms and his thighs are aching under the attention of Hermann's massaging hands and how _embarrassingly_ hard he is already. "I didn't. I imagined dressing up a little, maybe wearing a bow-tie for you to tug out of my collar. Tendo gave me a couple of fancy ones before I left—"

Hermann leans up to silence him with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, and Newton can't help whimpering when one of those hands slides up from his thigh to stroke his prick. "You are everything I want," he insists, and then his hand is gone, and he's getting to his feet and using Newton's shoulder for balance while he squirms out of his sweater-vest and sets about unbuttoning his shirt with one hand. "You could be covered in _mud_ right now for all I care, Newton, and I assure you I'd still . . . "

It's unfair how quickly Hermann can shed his clothes one-handed while he's using Newton for balance, and even _more_ unfair how strikingly beautiful he is to behold. There's a fine flush on Hermann's high cheekbones in the lamplight, and when he makes a move for it on the desk-top, as if to douse the flame, Newton catches him around the waist and pulls Hermann tight against him.

"The real kicker is, I hurt all over," Newton mutters against Hermann's chest, nuzzling the smooth, heated skin beneath his lips. "I never, _ever_ want to get in that rowboat again as long as I live."

" _Dann leg dich hin_ ," Hermann whispers, nudging at him and climbing forward even as Newton scoots back to settle against the pillows, " _ich kümmere mich um dich_." He settles close against Newton's side and tugs up the covers, leaning in for another kiss.

Newton doesn't feel quite so wretched anymore, but he's still shivering as much with the chill as with arousal. Hermann touches as much of Newton as he can reach, never _once_ draws back from Newton's mouth until his hand slides down from Newton's belly to stroke him, gentle but firm.

" _Träum ich_ ," he gasps, pushing weakly into Hermann's grasp, " _oder ist das, das Ende, oder _ . . . "

" _Shhh_ , there now," Hermann soothes, his voice faltering, and the way he's pressed up against Newton's hip and shifting in response to Newton's thrusts is perfect. He's got his leg draped across Newton's thighs; Newton's overcome with such a hushed, wondrous sense of relief just to _hold_ —

He moans wordlessly, breaking beneath the next slight shift of Hermann's weight like a wave.

"Oh," Hermann gasps, burying his face in the crook of Newton's neck, "Newton, yes, _oh_ —!"

Long minutes pass before Newton can catch his breath, much less prompt his boneless fingers to drift down the length of Hermann's spine and settle in to rub at the small of his back. Hermann sighs and stretches against him, presses a drowsy, feverish kiss to the side of Newton's neck.

"You must be starving," he murmurs, propping himself up in order to meet Newton's eyes. "I’d have to put the stew back on; it's been sitting off the flame a few hours, so I can't promise . . . "

Newton kisses him, soft and slow and possessive, and Hermann just _melts_ even though they're a mess. Newton is seized by occasional shivers even now that he's bandaged, sated, and mostly dry.

"I'd like that," he says truthfully; his world narrows to the lovely sharpness of Hermann's smile.

Hermann's valiant attempt at cookery isn't the greatest thing Newton has ever eaten: like cold tea, he suspects, it's an acquired taste. They fall asleep afterward, wrapped up in a pair of Hermann's well-worn flannel dressing gowns (and in each other).

When Newton wakes, he isn't alone, and he isn't on the sofa; both of these things are worth celebrating. He nuzzles the top of Hermann's comically-mussed head and tucks it under his chin. There's a thin stream of sunlight through the curtains.

Hermann pokes him in the ribs, making him jump. "Are you going to show me what you found?"

" _Jesus_ ," Newton sighs, and then kisses him. "Good morning to you, too. Give me a minute?"

"I suppose we'll have to dress and go out, won't we?" says Hermann, irritated at the prospect.

"Nope, I can do you one better," replies Newton, disentangling himself from Hermann and slipping out from under the covers. He _does_ hurt all over, but it's easy enough to make sure he's got Hermann's robe belted in place and to fish through Hermann's drawers until he comes up with a clean pair of socks. "Stay here," he tells Hermann, and kisses the indignant pout off his lips.

Crunching his way down the shore to the water in a pair of damp, unlaced boots is unforgiving business, but, much to his relief, the jars are all right where he'd left them. He selects the nearest and trips back out of the shallows, having thoroughly soaked Hermann's socks.

He holds it up to the sunlight and squints, his heart skipping in relief at the flurry of motion within. He tucks it under his arm and heads back inside, finds Hermann in the kitchen fussing over the stove and the kettle.

"Remove those before you take another step!" Hermann shouts in warning, so Newton does.

" _Craspedacusta sowerbyi_ ," he says proudly, stepping up to the stove next to Hermann and holding the jar at eye level. "They're not completely undocumented in this part of the world; it's just that blooms of them in bodies of fresh water outside of Asia are pretty rare. The hot weather's had a lot to do with it, probably. They'll revert back to polyp form soon, though, so look while you can."

"Jellyfish," says Hermann, in faint amazement. "Those shimmers and shadows were _jellyfish_?"

"Thousands and thousands and _thousands_ of them," Newton replies. "Yup. Neat, aren't they?"

Hermann watches the dozen or so specimens pulse and flutter for a few more seconds, at which point he takes the jar out of Newton's grasp and sets it down in the sink. He turns Newton toward the window and wraps both arms around his middle, leaning into him with a contented sigh.

"Risk your life for something the size of a shilling again," he says, "and I shall be _quite_ cross."

"That wasn't the idea," Newton sighs, covering Hermann's arms with his own. "Have you ever read those accounts from centuries ago, even from just _decades_ ago? Nessie sightings used to be incredible, man. Heads, necks, and lumps in the water, even some unknown beast that chewed a guy's body to _bits_. Huge, unidentified shapes lumbering across the road in front of motorists. That kind of thing." Newton sighs, staring through the window and out across the grey water. "Just once, Hermann, just _once_ , I'd like to be the guy who discovers something extraordinary."

"We'll keep looking," says Hermann, with firm resolve. "Every summer, if we must."

Newton turns his head, blinking back at him incredulously. "I'm not sure I understand."

"I want you," says Hermann, gently, "no matter what the cost. And before you go pointing out that I'm the one, between the two of us, with more to lose—no, I _won't_ have it. I can't bear to think like that any longer, can't bear to go on hiding in plain sight without ever having had _this_." He tightens his arms around Newton, presses his lips against Newton's hair. "If I could persuade you . . . "

"You had me persuaded by about the third or fourth time you left me cold tea," Newton admits. "I know what happened, Hermann. It must have shaken things up worse over here than it did across the pond. He was a colleague of yours for all I know—or a competitor, or an idol. I don't care. I'd rather risk it than go home to the prospect of working for institutions that will happily enough put me in the classroom, but just as happily mock me behind my back. I want you, too. Want to _stay_."

"Then I shall happily keep you," Hermann tells him, "and see to it that your tea is henceforth hot."


	2. A Short Distance Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story picks up a few days after where _Our Breath Will Still_ ends (the events of the final scene of _OBWS_ happen between Saturday, June 18th and Sunday, June 19th, 1955; this begins on Wednesday, June 22nd) and moves forward to cover the last weeks they spend on the banks of Loch Ness. The German phrases have hover-text translation. For [**blairtrabbit**](http://blairtrabbit.tumblr.com), whose birthday was yesterday and who was the very first person to read _OBWS_ ; for my miracle of a beta, [**whitmans-kiss**](http://whitmans-kiss.tumblr.com), whose attention to detail is impeccable; and also for everyone who participated in the 2014 _PR_ Mini-Bang.

Hermann rushes down the grassy incline from the shoulder of the road, the hood of his borrowed rain slicker (his own hadn't been within immediate reach) drooping so much that it all but obscures his vision. Between the slickness underfoot and the overladen picnic basket clutched in his free hand, he almost slips. He recovers his balance, taking a moment to steady himself with his cane, and then dashes under the porch awning. He drops his burden and pounds on the door.

" _Newton_!" he shouts, jiggling the knob. "Open the door, please, or I'll be soaked through—"

Before he quite knows what's happening, the door has swung inward and the basket's been snagged from next to his mud-caked left foot. He finds himself dragged inside the cottage and divested of Newton's travesty of a coat before he can even chide Newton for the onion-and-garlic tainted state of his hands, and, in any case, after long seconds of being so sweetly kissed, he no longer _wants_ to.

"I thought about that a lot," Newton sighs, nuzzling his cheek. "Before, I mean, but it was about putting you _in_ the coat and then taking you down to the Inn for a drink, showing you off—"

"Not tonight," Hermann sighs, propping his cane against the wall; Newton patiently lets him hold onto his wrist while he bends to pick apart the sodden laces of his shoes. "You've been so hard at work on our supper since late afternoon, and the weather's such that I don't have the heart . . . "

Hermann trails off and straightens up, kicking out of one shoe and then the other, just _staring_ at Newton's expectant smile until he legitimately wonders if, with the exception of the run he's just made into the village for wine and dinner rolls, they'll _ever_ emerge from this haven they've made for themselves. Four nights now they've shared Hermann's bed, and they haven't often left it for many of the daylight hours in between.

He pulls Newton to him and sighs, dizzy with it.

"No pints tonight, then," says Newton. "We're rocking the recluse thing, why change?"

It would be too easy to strip Newton of the ancient cook's apron he'd found in one of the kitchen cupboards, too easy to strip him of that and his clothing besides, too easy to press him down on the sofa till he twitches and whimpers and _begs_. Hermann clears his throat and takes a step back, retrieving his cane. "Bread's in the basket, as is the wine," he says. "Damp, but accounted for."

"The oxtail's gonna burn if I don't get back," Newton replies, picking up the basket, "so, come on, you can watch while I stir for a few more minutes till it's ready. Tell me what's going on out in the world while we've been so busy—" he blushes, as if he'd been party to Hermann's thoughts "— _ah_."

Perched on a stool in the kitchen, Hermann finds relating the news of the day a considerable chore; why should he wish to think of Emma McGilp learning to drive under Hercules Hansen's careful tutelage (no doubt with young Chuck scowling on) when he's got an exquisite view of the intricately-inked designs on Newton's exposed forearms and the pleasing shift of his muscles from shoulder blades to posterior? They've been frantic, Hermann knows this, positively _shameless_ , and it's only just today Newton's felt sufficiently recovered from all that rowing he'd had to do in the storm the previous week. If Hermann's to fault for keeping him flat on his back or curled on his side with Hermann's hand on his cock, so be it.

"You're really distracted, you know that?" Newton asks, glancing over his shoulder at Hermann, undercutting his words with a wink. "Do you wanna taste this?" he asks, but it's a moot point, because he's already turning with the spoonful on which he's been blowing instead of responding to Hermann's litany of gossip. He puts it in Hermann's open mouth and admits, "I hope that this isn't complete shit. I've never been as good a cook as my uncle. He and Dad think I'm a lost cause."

"It's fine," Hermann tells him, handing back the spoon. "Shall I clear space and set the table?"

While Newton ladles soup into a pair of dingy, chipped crockery bowls, Hermann studies their makeshift desk and realizes neither his books and papers, nor Newton's, are in any state to be shuffled off without disrupting either one of them. They end up seated on the sofa as per usual, plates and bowls and mugs of tea left over from that morning set out on the coffee table instead.

"It's a good day for this," Newton observes, drinking what's left of his broth down to dregs. "Nobody told me to expect this up here in _July_ , Hermann. This weather's the pits."

"August improves somewhat," Hermann says, setting his empty bowl down before fetching what's left of his second roll, "although you'll not experience terribly much of it, to my regret."

There's a moment of awkward silence between them, and the weight of what they haven't as of yet discussed seeps in like the chill from beneath the door-frame. Newton, having left the apron in the kitchen and rolled his shirt-sleeves back down, tugs Hermann's arm off the back of the sofa and leans into it, burying his nose in Hermann's slipover jumper with a sigh. Hermann holds him.

"I only paid up through the end of this month," Newton explains with reluctance. "You?"

"I generally remain until the middle of _next_ month," says Hermann; he sets the remnant of his roll back on the table and spends a moment smoothing Newton's hair. "I shall pay your way, it's not—"

"I quit my teaching jobs back in April, and all of my books are here," replies Newton, helpfully, but he sounds a bit lost and uncertain. "It's just my other stuff. The apartment, my clothes, that kind of thing. Not much furniture, but I guess I can tell Tendo to sell that off and keep the profit in exchange for closing out my affairs and shipping the rest—"

"You ought to _ask_ your friend and his wife whether or not they're able to perform these duties first," says Hermann, wryly. "Furthermore, had you even indicated you might not return?"

"I had no idea I was going to meet you," says Newton, irritated, but he rests his head against Hermann's shoulder and winds his fingers tighter in Hermann's jumper, "so that would be a _no_."

Hermann kisses Newton's forehead, finding that the slow creep of arousal that had begun well before they sat down to supper is all too eager to return. "There's time yet," he sighs, stroking Newton's side, considering the benefit of letting Newton shift into his lap _versus_ the fact that they've only just held each other till now, kisses and hands and limbs a feverish tangle, and Hermann wants to try something different, wants to see the look in Newton's eyes when Hermann's down on his knees.

"You're too quiet, man," says Newton, and tries to make the first move, but he doesn't resist when Hermann untangles them and pushes him to sit pressed against the back of the sofa. " _Ich_ — _was_?"

 Hermann braces himself on Newton's thighs till he can get down on the floor. There's a rug in front of the sofa on which the coffee table stands, and he's got to push _that_ back a foot or two, blast it, before he can settle in, feeling the unforgiving flagstone beneath the rug, and knows he'll regret this come morning. _But it'll be worth remembering_ , he thinks.

 "It's fortunate we've kept the curtains shut," Hermann murmurs, checking Newton's expression before he tugs Newton's shirt free of his jeans, starting on its lower buttons. "Isn't it?"

 Newton, who looks like he might be on the verge of hyperventilating, just nods mutely.

 " _Shhh_ ," Hermann whispers, reaching up to stroke his thumb along Newton's lower lip while he finishes the last few buttons, spreading Newton's shirt so he can tug free his undershirt, too, and rucks it up to expose his belly. He leans in to kiss just beneath Newton's navel, and Newton makes a low, dismayed sound—too soft, too broken. "Is it that you don't like this? Darling, if you _don't_ —"

 "It's that I've never _done_ it, Hermann," he grits out in agitation. "You're an old hand, I get it, that's fine, but some of us have had a hard time of it and I've never even—oh _God_ , self, stop talking—"

 "Firstly, tell me if you want this," says Hermann, kissing his skin again. "Would my mouth please you?" Newton whimpers and bucks his hips up beneath the movement of Hermann's lips against his belly, so Hermann nods and strokes his denim-covered thighs in sympathy. "Good, because yours would please _me_ if you ever wished to offer—but _hush_ , lovely, I _know_. Would you feel better if I told you where I've been, or if you had the chance to tell _me_ —"

 "There's not that much to tell," says Newton, dully, stroking his fingers through Hermann's hair over and over again. "There was this girl I thought I loved a long time ago. In high school, back in Brookhaven. Immigrant kid just like me. She had it harder, I guess, what with her dad being Arab and all? That went nowhere fast; she threw me over, and who'd blame her. I was more interested in science fair projects and keeping tadpoles in fishtanks. And then I should probably mention, the first time it was a guy, I _swear_ it wasn't just a fling; we saw each other on at _least_ one dig per year for six or seven years in a row. Ken was one of the best excavation techs we had, and he'd grown up in one of those internment camps in California, you know, like they tried to pretend they weren't just doing the same thing to Japanese-Americans that— _that_ —"

Hermann lifts his head to look up at Newton, trying desperately to ignore the ache that's begun to spread in his hip. "Newton, do you want me to stop? This is no way to discuss—"

"No, man," says Newton, vehemently, " _no_ , I will _kill_ you if you stop before you've even started, not even kidding, but maybe you could give me a summary of shit I should know about you? Oh, well, full disclosure, there was this Greek musician before I left Boston, but _I_ threw _him_ over, so."

"That doesn't necessarily tell me what you've done and what you haven't," Hermann murmurs, stroking Newton from nipples to hipbones until his breath hitches and his eyelids flutter, and then unfastens his jeans with utmost care. "As for what you need to know about me, that information is both less _and_ more. I fell for a colleague during graduate school, did _anything_ he asked—anything you can imagine, Newton, anything of which you've ever heard. More the fool I."

"I've never done anything more than what we've been doing," Newton says reluctantly.

Hermann nods gently, finding that his arousal has spiked again, what with Newton's prick so clearly hard and straining now that Hermann's got his jeans undone. He tugs them down and off Newton's hips, pants and all, till he's got a full view uninterrupted by covers or fingers or anything else. He cups Newton's bollocks in one hand and gives him a few strokes with the other.

"My only other liaison, shall we say," Hermann murmurs, and how Newton's listening through the haze of pleasure in which he's mired, Hermann is _not_ certain, "ended due to my own indifference."

"I can't believe we're talking about old flames while you've got my _cock_ in your goddamn _hand,_ " Newton hisses under his breath, delirious, but there's a kind of joy in his words that excites Hermann all the more. "So I'm— _scheiße, wie ist das passiert_ —"

"This is happening because I want to give you nothing less than you deserve," says Hermann, directly meeting his eyes, and doesn't hesitate to reward him with an unhurried lick; Newton's cry is all he has _ever_ needed to hear for this to seem _right_. "Because you've said _yes_ ," he adds softly.

 Newton is beautiful: he looks positively _wrecked_ , and more than a little bit scandalized.

 "Can I do you next?" he asks dazedly, framing Hermann's face with trembling fingers.

 "Let's see how you feel after, how's that?" Hermann tells him, and doesn't waste any time adjusting his grip so that he can draw in Newton's length. He lets it slip out, then back in; Newton shudders.

 Hermann sucks, ignoring a sudden flare of pain, lets his eyes drift shut and savors the clench of Newton's hands against his jaw before they map shaky progress down Hermann's neck to his shoulders. Newton can't swallow the sounds he's making like Hermann can swallow _him_ , but he's certainly trying. Hermann could go on sucking Newton like this forever, he thinks, his body's limitations be _damned_ , but it's scarcely a minute till Newton's almost sobbing and his hips jerk _hard_ —

 "Fuck, fuck, fuck, _Hermann_ ," he gasps as Hermann, unwilling to be pushed off, swallows around him. "How do you, _ah_ , fuck, Hermann, I just _don't_ ," he finishes, sagging weakly, "don't _know_."

 Hermann wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, permits a boneless and shaky Newton to help him back up onto the sofa. He's hungry for this, for Newton's lips parting against his and the scrape of stubble and the way Newton's restless hands don't waste any time picking his clothing apart; he knows they ought to move to the bedroom once they've both struggled out of what's left of their garments but he just can't be _bothered_ when Newton's body is all warm, precious weight settling over him. What he wants now is for Newton's lovely, infuriating mouth to stay right where it _is_.

 Newton makes a frustrated noise when Hermann prevents him from shifting down the length of his body. "You won't let me get my way, will you?" he asks, letting Hermann rut against his thigh.

 "Nnn— _no_ ," groans Hermann, holding Newton firmly in place, and it's the sound of Newton's content sigh as much as the feel of him that pushes Hermann over. He lets go, _revels_ in it.

 "You're in for a surprise tomorrow morning," says Newton, once Hermann's returned to his senses, and uses his shirt to mop at the mess between them. "Or you _would_ have been, anyway."

 "I've never been one for surprises," Hermann admits, tugging Newton back down once he's finished, tossing the shirt aside with distaste. "I prefer to know what's coming, as it were."

" _Viel Glück damit_ ," Newton mutters against Hermann's neck. " _Bist du_ _verrückt_?"

 " _Vielleicht für dich_ ," replies Hermann, fondly smiling, and holds him closer still.

 

 *

 

Newton has got to the point with porridge where he doesn't burn it anymore, so Hermann is happy to doze a while longer while Newton clatters about in the kitchen and intermittently swears at the stove. This state of affairs persists pleasantly enough until Newton comes in with a bowl in each hand and two spoons stuck in his mouth; Hermann is conscious enough to sit up and grab both of these as soon as Newton has settled beside him, although he blinks at the bowl he's being offered.

"What's wrong?" Newton asks, frowning. "Too much cream? Too much sugar? Look, it _can't_ be the latter; you haven't even tasted it yet. If it's not too much cream, what is it?"

 "Thank you," says Hermann, muzzily, and takes the bowl. "I assure you it's not . . . "

 "Oh, jeez," Newton sighs, stirring his porridge. "Sorry. Three days of those painkillers."

 "Yes, well," Hermann sighs. "You were worth the trouble, and I shan't change my stance."

 Newton suddenly looks less interested in his breakfast. "Hermann. After we eat, can I . . . "

 "You may do to me whatever you bloody well please," Hermann sighs, not as put-upon as he makes a point of sounding. "Although we mustn't stay _here_ all day, however tempting. Hadn't you said—"

 "Gotta take the boat back," Newton replies, eating far faster than is healthy for _anyone_. "It's Monday, June twenty-seventh, right? We're like two or three days over the period for which you'd paid. Not that Herc will care all that much, but I don't necessarily want to go making enemies around here, not when by now they've concluded I'm just a _little_ nuts to begin with."

Hermann surrenders the dregs of his porridge in exchange for Newton peeling him out of his dressing gown and kissing him from throat-hollow to belly in the most _agonizingly_ exquisite prick-tease to which Hermann's ever been party. Hermann loses himself in the feel of Newton's mouth and his sure, precise fingers. Hermann's climax overwhelms him in no time at _all_ in comparison to the eternity leading up to it; Newton spits, gasping apologies, but Hermann kisses the words right off his lips. Newton comes pushing helplessly into Hermann's fist, moaning Hermann's name.

Lazing about and cleaning up takes far more time than Hermann would have liked, what with knowing they've incurred the water-faring equivalent of overdue library materials, but they're presentable and out the door by eleven. Hermann had insisted on dropping several of his books and one of Newton's in the picnic basket for taking along, as the rain had blown over and the sun had returned. While he rows, Newton expresses intense concern that said books might get _wet._ Hermann feels obliged to point out that such an occurrence would be _his_ fault, given what he'd snuck into the basket at the last minute for purposes of waving under the noses of unsuspecting plebs.

On arrival at the boathouse, Hermann stays put while Newton shores up and tethers their transport, idly watching some minor drama or another involving Raleigh Becket, the brother whose name Hermann cannot seem to remember, Chuck Hansen, and a perplexed if charming bulldog pup.

Newton seems to have taken notice by the time he returns to fetch the picnic basket and offer Hermann his hand. "I don't remember being that loud when I was their age," he confesses, helping Hermann clamber out of the boat and onto the gravelly shore. "Were _you_ that loud when you were their age? No, never mind. Of course you weren't. You're only that loud when—"

"Hey, it's the Science Department!" Raleigh yells, beckoning and waving with both hands. "Doctor Geiszler! Doctor Gottlieb! We've missed you out here. Where have you _been_ for a week?"

"Chasing monsters," Newton says as they make their way up to where the young men are standing in a circle around the dog, who's too busy whining, licking shoes, pawing at trouser-cuffs to pay Newton's rummaging in the picnic basket much heed. "Look at them," Newton says, handing the jar to Raleigh's brother, who turns the kaleidoscope of tiny, swirling jellies over in his hands.

"Yancy didn't believe you'd find _anything_ ," says Raleigh, helpfully, and Hermann breathes a sigh of relief. "Chuck here didn't believe you would, either, but Mister Hansen was on my side."

"Lucky thing for you, we didn't set out specific terms on _something_ ," says Yancy, but he's grinning as he hands the jar over to his brother, so he can't have lost all that much in the wager. "Jellyfish. Neat-o. I always thought those were only in the ocean. What d'you think, Chuck? How about you adopt some of these critters to keep your new dog entertained?"

"His name's Max," says Chuck, squinting at the jellyfish in disgust as Raleigh holds them up in front of his face, "and if I were you, _Doctor_ , I'd dump these buggers back where they belong. Where I come from, we've got ones that can sting you to death. Not so fun now, are they?"

" _Craspedacusta sowerbyi_ and _Chironex fleckeri_ aren't even remotely the same thing," Newton tells him, and Hermann wishes he could head off the approaching rant with a judiciously-placed squeeze to Newton's hand, but he ought not to risk it. "Just to clarify, the _Chironex_ are the deadly ones you've got Down Under—what am I saying, you've got _Physalia physalis_ , too. Sorry, is this lecture confusing? Box jellyfish and Portuguese man o' war, those are the common names for the ones you've got. These little guys in the jar don't really have a common name, so just think of them as freshwater jellies, whereas your deadly friends out there in the ass-end of beyond are _saltwater_ —"

"Newton, I rather fear we're forgetting a previous engagement," Hermann lies, tugging on Newton's sleeve, although the gesture is rendered ridiculous by the bulldog pup having decided to take up licking Hermann's shoes. "That is, _er_. Mister Hansen, your animal seems hell-bent on—"

"That's _Max_ to you," says Chuck, bending down to scoop up the dog, and Max takes to enthusiastically licking his face. "You owe me for three more days, mate. _Raleigh_ here's got it right, though, nobody's seen you two in a while. Time flies when you're having fun, eh?"

For split second, Hermann is tempted to chastise this young man for making assumptions, but it's when he sets eyes on Newton's troubled, wide-eyed expression that he finds himself at a loss. Unexpectedly, Yancy shatters the moment by good-naturedly punching Chuck in the shoulder, and Raleigh, quick to catch on and follow suit, takes hold of Chuck by the other and shakes him.

"Aw, c'mon," Yancy cajoles, giving Chuck another clap before releasing him at the same instant his brother does. "Let it go, huh? Just this once. I think _we_ turned in a day early last time, so I don't think it'll kill you to give Doctor Geiszler a couple of days on the house."

Hermann is more than certain Chuck is being a sore sport because he's lost an appalling amount of money in the bet, but there's something in Newton's posture and in the set of his features that's not quite right.

Hermann rummages in his pocket for as much change as he can find and gladly offers it.

"We _really_ must be going," he tells Chuck, although the young man makes no move to take the money given the look Yancy's still got trained on him. "Won't you give your father my regards?"

"Pay for an extra day next time and we'll call it square," says Chuck, gruffly, and gives Max a thorough rubbing before he sets the pup back down. "Don't dump those things near my boats."

"I hate to break it to you, but they're all _through_ your boats," Newton says, stuffing the jar back in the picnic basket, taking hold of Hermann's free arm before Hermann can protest. " _B_ _is später_."

They've scarcely made it up to the road when Raleigh comes dashing up behind them, slightly out of breath. "Can Yance and I come by later with Mako? I know she'll want to see the jellies."

"Of course you may," Hermann tells him, fond of this young man for reasons he can't even quite explain. "Call it seven o'clock, and then we'll all head down to the Inn afterward for supper."

"That's great," says Raleigh, beaming at both of them, and dashes off again. "See you later!"

"Since when did we become the babysitting squad?" asks Newton, petulantly, and tucks Hermann's arm closer against his chest. "This has been more than enough excitement for one day, trust me."

"Something troubled you back there, Newton," Hermann replies. "I'd like to know what it was."

Newton twines his fingers with Hermann's, clutching their hands to his heart. "I didn't tell you about . . . look, it was a couple of weeks ago, I'm sorry. It was that night it was raining and you weren't feeling up to going out, so I went down there to pick up something for both of us."

"Presumably the night you were thinking about kissing me in a raincoat?" asks Hermann, wryly.

"Yes, okay, _that_ one," Newton sighs as they continue to walk at a brisk pace. "While I was waiting for the food to arrive, I overheard Herc and Chuck at the bar. They were talking about _us_."

"That's nothing untoward," says Hermann, trying his best to quell the panic rising in his chest, to stay the impulse to pull his arm away from Newton. "They must discuss clients all the time."

"Chuck was _implying things_ , Hermann," says Newton, desperately. "Implying things that are true, even, and which are, you need not remind me, considered highly illegal in this country. Considered highly illegal pretty much _everywhere_ , in fact. Herc was defending us, though. When Chuck brought the Turing press into it, Herc defended _him_ , too, what with what he did in the War—"

"You ought to have told me sooner," says Hermann, carefully, and hates his pulse for racing as he draws Newton's hand up to his lips for the quickest kiss to the back he can muster before dropping it. Newton looks somewhat lost, flexing his fingers at his side, but he nods. "Inasmuch as I've promised I have no intention of abandoning you, we must still be vigilant. Do you understand?"

" _You're_ asking _me_ if I understand?" asks Newton, incredulously. "I've been living with this for as long as you have, so don't lecture me on the dangers of something I'm _just_ as willing to risk—"

" _I'm_ sorry," Hermann whispers, reaching for Newton's arm; after all, no one had thought ill of them engaging in such physical contact at the ruins. Newton pats his hand and pulls away, sighing.

"No, you're right," he says, unable to mask his crestfallen tone. "We need to be careful."

Hermann makes it up to him by taking them to read for a while in one of his favorite wooded, secluded spots not far from the shore.

Someone had dragged a wooden bench into the clearing years ago and forgot about it; Hermann has been taking advantage of this fact ever since. They read for half an hour or so, at which point Newton gives up the pretense of being interested in his book and leans over to press a chaste, adoring kiss against the corner of Hermann's mouth.

"Let's go home and make sure we've got everything presentable for the kids," he says.

That evening, Yancy, Raleigh, and Mako spend an inordinate amount of time cooing over the jars of jellyfish. Raleigh asks if they can have one, and Hermann can't help but smile as Newton reluctantly agrees to part with a jar so long as they release them sooner than later. They set one aside for taking down to the pub and help Newton release the others just offshore. Hermann stands watching the tiny hydrozoa until they've vanished into the murk. He squeezes Newton's hand while the youngsters have their backs turned, suggests quietly that they head to supper. Newton agrees.

There's no unoccupied table large enough to accommodate all of them at this time of night, so Hermann reluctantly agrees to occupying the bar and finds it an exhausting experience. Emma doesn't so much tolerate Yancy's attention as return it with a kind of tentative hope; meanwhile, Raleigh and Mako are so engrossed in each other that Newton mutters in German about the relative merits of actually _being social_ when he thought that had been the whole idea in the _first_ place. Once they've finished eating, Hermann touches his elbow and inclines his head toward the door.

Later, safely home, they make love in silence, but Newton's touch is forgiving. Hermann can't bring himself to let go of Newton for anything, and Newton clings to him all the tighter. They doze afterward, curled in the wrecked sheets; Hermann supposes they'll have to switch to Newton's room until the linens can be sorted, what with the present state of them. Newton interrupts his reverie.

"Mako knows, doesn't she," he says. "She's had your number for a long time. She doesn't mind."

"She's an extraordinary young woman," Hermann replies. "She keeps her classmates' secrets, too."

"There haven't been any witch-hunts amongst the faculty, have there?" Newton asks, burrowing closer against Hermann, tucking his head under Hermann's chin. "I mean, I have to assume a certain level of . . . of just _looking the other way_ , you know? That's what happens at Harvard, anyway. Mostly. When students get caught out, it really isn't pretty. I mean, I guess it's not when faculty do, either, but it's more often students than faculty. I'm not saying I felt totally safe, but it's easier in large cities with liberal-thinking populations. Some of the faculty have long-term partners they _live_ with, even, and nobody bats an eyelash so long as they pretend in public . . . "

"If you're worried about living arrangements, please set your mind at ease," Hermann says, stroking Newton's hair, his back, anything he can _reach_. "I declined housing within university premises; I preferred to rent within walking distance, especially when there was a cottage with a sea view—"

"Wait," Newton replies, raising his head to squint at Hermann. "You come all the way up here to rent a holiday cottage on a lake when you _live_ in some idyllic seaside set-up to begin with?"

"It's idyllic, but it's too close to work," says Hermann, with distaste. "And my mother loved Scotland," he adds softly. "During the six months she was with us in Britain, it was summer. We came here and rented for a month or so for a brief respite from bad news. She was so charmed . . . "

"Shit," Newton sighs, giving Hermann an apologetic kiss. "Sorry, man. Forget I even asked."

Long after they've doused the lamp, Hermann lies awake with Newton fast asleep in his arms.

 

*

 

The telephone box is crowded, and the air outside is humid, oppressive, so they don't bother to close the door.

Hermann watches Newton fight with the buttons and currency he still finds mystifying until it ceases to amuse him; just as Newton grows fractious with the heat and abruptly demands that _Hermann_ do it if he thinks he's so clever when it comes to placing overseas calls, the operator comes on the line and shouts at them for arguing: do they want to place a call or _not_? Newton apologizes and lets Hermann pluck the right change out of his hand, and then gives the operator his friend's number.

" _Hey_!" Newton shouts into the receiver when a distant, tinny voice comes on the line. "Daddy-o yourself, man, for real. Happy fourth. I know, right? Yep, it's crazy. I've been here two months."

Hermann rolls his eyes and leans out the door for some air, thick though it is. On the front stoop of the post office, Emma McGilp is arguing with her father in hushed tones; that'll be with regard to the elder Becket brother's affections, he doesn't doubt. Meanwhile, across the street, Hercules Hansen and Admiral Pentecost make for a curious picture: they're carrying on what appears to be a perfectly amicable conversation in the shade while, some short distance off in the sunshine, Raleigh is snapping photographs of Mako with what appears to be a Land camera. She's holding two photographs in her hand, grinning from ear to ear, as Raleigh cajoles her and snaps a third.

"Yeah, man, _relax_ ," Newton is saying, and Hermann's determination to listen in snaps back into focus. "He's right here. What do you mean _is it really true_? I used all the words we agreed on, right, in the event of Things Happening That Tendo Will Want to Know About? Okay, _good_. Yes, it's really true. I wouldn't be staying otherwise, would I? Practical joke three months late? What the fuck? No. _No_ , I am not yanking your chain. What do you mean by that? Yes, look, of _course_ I'll come back to visit you and Al and my folks. Jesus, are you deaf? By the way, I'm totally going to tell Dad and Illia next time I write that you call them _my folks_. They'll get a kick out of that."

Hermann gives Newton what he hopes is a _patient_ long-suffering look, tapping his wrist to indicate that Newton's almost out of time. Newton waves him off and makes a mock-offended face, but whether the expression is intended for Hermann or for Tendo, Hermann honestly can't tell.

"That's what I'm saying," he continues. "Sell that shit and keep the money. That's the only way I can compensate you for your trouble; it's not like the locals were so grateful I solved the mystery of those jellyfish that they paid me a cash reward. Keep looking for the _actual_ monster? Oh, for sure. Hermann says we'll come back every summer if we have to. _Yup_. Because he's just that swee—"

"Mister Choi," Hermann sighs, yanking the phone out of Newton's grasp and bringing it up to his own ear, "it's an honor to meet you, and I'm pleased to say your reputation precedes you. What Newton is failing to disclose is that he has less than thirty seconds of connection-time left."

"Oh," says the voice on the other end, " _hey_! So you exist. I thought maybe Newt had made up some imaginary gentleman friend and was having me on. No offense, right? Nice to meet you."

" _Newt_?" Hermann echoes. "Do you mean you actually _humor_ him and call him by that regrettable—"

 _Click_. Newton gives him an aggravated look and yanks the phone away, puts it back on the cradle.

" _Du bist hoffnungslos_ ," he laments, shoving at Hermann till he shifts out into the street, and then beckons as he steps out himself. "For real, Hermann. I didn't even get the chance to tell him where he needs to ship the rest of my clothes. I'm assuming that's to _your_ place and not _here_ , right? Well, I don't even _know_ your address yet. Maybe if you'd kept your knickers out of a twist—"

" _Idiot, Mund halten!_ " Hermann snaps, grabbing Newton's elbow, hustling him along past Raleigh and Mako before the youngsters can greet and delay them. "Keep your _voice_ down; we are in _public_. Has nothing we've so painstakingly discussed in the past week even gotten _through_ —"

"Like you're arguing any less conspicuously than I am!" Newton practically shouts, wrenching free of Hermann's grasp, dashing a short distance ahead. "Wanna know what it's like to cause a scene, Hermann? We're doing it. We are having a knock-down, drag-out _row_ —which is a ridiculous word, by the way, do you goddamn Brits and Brit-wannabes even _listen_ to yourselves—over the fact that you cannot handle your shit because I slipped and went _informal on you in public_ in a language _nobody else in that street can even speak_ , and this after we've made a _joke_ of it!"

"The Beckets understand at _least_ every other word we say," replies Hermann, viciously, and Newton's expression shifts from anger to shock at the bite in Hermann's tone. "Clearly you weren't paying attention that night we cooked the fish; I was speaking with Raleigh in the kitchen—"

"So Raleigh Becket heard _me_ tell you that you're hopeless and heard _you_ call me an idiot," Newton shoots back, glaring at a pair of passing motorists who have slowed to listen in. "Big fucking deal!"

Before Hermann can open his mouth to hurl an appropriately scathing response, yet another automobile comes up alongside them, this one slowing to a halt. Hercules Hansen leans out the window, laying unnecessarily on the horn. Just beyond him, Chuck occupies the front seat.

"If you're still on about who owes whom for those extra days, don't sweat it," Herc says cheerfully; both of them stop dead in their tracks and just _stare_ at him. "Nice day for a stroll, isn't it?"

"You might want to butt out, Dad," says Chuck, under the pretense of being helpful, but his sarcasm is so heavy, so _ominous_ , that Hermann can't bring himself to ignore it. "They're having a domestic."

"And _you_ keep your mouth shut," says Herc, sternly, rounding on his son. "Nobody asked."

Hermann clears his throat, putting on as much of a smile as he can manage. "As a matter of fact, we've been attempting to hash out the particulars of Doctor Geiszler having accepted a visiting scholar post at my institution in the autumn," he lies smoothly, and Chuck abruptly looks disappointed. "Getting the rest of his things across the Atlantic is proving quite the to-do."

"Need me to collect anything from the rail station, you just say the word," Herc tells Newton, winking conspiratorially. "This one here never does aught but make life difficult, yeah?"

"Yeah," Newton sighs, giving Hermann a sidelong glance, and smiles uneasily. "You got it."

Max hops up, seemingly out of nowhere, and clambers into Herc's lap. He barks in excited recognition until Chuck wrangles the dog into his own lap and mutters apologies to his father. Herc gives them a perfunctory, yet fond salute, and drives on. Hermann finally returns Newton's gaze.

"That is how one handles a situation such as this _gracefully_ ," he says, offering Newton his arm. "Now, help me along, won't you? Standing about in that telephone box has taken its toll."

" _Rauch und Spiegel_ ," Newton sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets instead of taking it.

Far more stung than he's willing to let on, Hermann just nods stiffly and follows Newton for the remaining two minutes' walk back to the cottage. He finds that the sensation doesn't linger, however, the more pronounced Newton's silence and lack of eye contact become.

By the time they've been back in their own space (inasmuch as they _can_ call it theirs) for ten or fifteen minutes, it's obvious that Newton has fled to the kitchen more for purposes of hiding than for making dinner. He _does_ eventually emerge with mugs of tea and slapdash sandwiches, but he doesn't say a word; they occupy opposite ends of the sofa and eat in silence, and Hermann's attempts to engage him fall short.

Concerned, but at a loss, Hermann rises with his plate.

"Until such time as you're ready to tell me what's the matter," he tells Newton, who's staring into his mug rather than at Hermann, "sit there and have a think. You know where to find me, darling."

" _'Liebchen' du dich_ ," Newton mutters under his breath; in spite of the fact that there's something uneven about his tone, something slightly _off_ , Hermann retires to his room with the two-volume set by Heuvelmans that Newton had lent him some weeks ago.

Two hours of rather enjoyable jazz and dishearteningly _optimistic_ pseudo-science later, Hermann hasn't heard so much as a peep from the common area. He'd supposed that Newton would've come knocking, given he'd probably noticed Hermann's choice of reading material; he'd imagined telling Newton not to be a fool, of _course_ everything's all right, and asking him to come to bed.

Hermann stops the record and emerges to find Newton's tea and sandwich unfinished on the coffee table, the couch empty. He makes his way to the kitchen, but there's nothing to be found except sunset filtered through a jar of dying jellyfish sat in the window casement. Hermann sighs, retrieves it, and makes his way to Newton's bedroom door. He knocks with determination.

"The last of your monster crop is poorly," Hermann tells him. "Let's release the survivors."

There's no answer, so Hermann waits half a minute before knocking again.

After three such attempts, he can only assume that Newton is far more stubborn than Hermann had even given him credit for, and that he's gone and fallen asleep. Hermann sighs and takes the jar outside on his own, finding it something of a chore to get the jar open while perilously balancing with an elbow on his cane. He lets the lid drop and bends to pour the strange creatures into the shallows.

"He means well," sighs Hermann, rising, and leaves the jar. "He means as well as I."

 

 *

 

Hermann wakes the next morning to find that Newton had not, in fact, joined him during the night. Fumbling along the wall for his cane, Hermann scoops his dressing gown off the floor, dons it, and bursts out of his room as quickly as he can manage; Newton's door is, alarmingly enough, not only still shut, but also locked. Agitated enough to shout himself hoarse, Hermann knocks.

"Newton, I'm sorry to wake you, but this is _ridiculous_. You can hardly mean to stay in there and sulk all day. There's breakfast to consider, and I'll have you know I'd like to discuss . . . "

Hermann trails off and tilts his head when he realizes there's been not so much as a stir from within.

The only sound he can hear is so faint that it would scarcely qualify as viable evidence, except he's learned the sounds Newton makes even when he thinks he's being quiet. There's a breath, deep and shuddering, but it's a different shade to the ones he knows; there's no contentment behind it, no satisfied exhaustion. It's tense and ugly and fills Hermann's heart with _dread_. He knocks again.

"You scarcely finished your supper," he chides, gently this time. "Come out, darling. You must be starving. I'll pop off to the kitchen, shall I? Get some tea and porridge started? Newton?"

Something hits the door, causing Hermann to start and trip backward into the arm of the sofa. At a guess, that had been Newton's pillow hurled with a considerable amount of force. He sighs, steadies himself, and makes for the kitchen all the same. Newton can't stay in there all day.

Breakfast is an arduous task, and lonely business without Newton there to chatter and serve as an extra pair of hands.

Hermann narrowly avoids burning the porridge, and he catches himself glancing in the direction of the window every so often with the full expectation that he'll see a jar of jellyfish still sitting there. Perhaps he ought to have left them; wasn't it that they simply reverted back to polyp stage rather than dying? He could just as easily have dumped them dormant.

"You'll want to come out now," he tells Newton through the door a short time later, having got both porridge and tea arranged for them on the coffee table. "Breakfast's ready, and, as I'd begun to mention, I'd very much like to discuss those volumes you so kindly lent me. They were . . . "

Hermann stares at the doorknob, which simply won't budge, and hears something less like a sigh and more like muffled tears from beyond it. If it's mere sulking, then Newton has gone _quite_ far enough, but something about the situation strikes him as incongruous. Hermann's heart races.

"I shall be right out here on the sofa," Hermann says resolutely, taking his habitual seat at the end nearest to Newton's door. "I shall also, I regret to say, be starting on breakfast without you."

Over an agonizing forty-five minutes, he finishes not only his tea and his porridge, but also the last four or five pages of Heuvelmans's second volume (over which he'd previously glossed). Even at relatively close range, he can hear nothing from inside Newton's room, not even soft footfalls or pillow-fetching, so the situation escalates from a worrisome one to full on low-grade emergency.

"If you're ill or there's something quite amiss, Newton," he says, "so help me, I will _break down_ —"

Herc Hansen's abrupt, energetic knocking on their front door takes Hermann entirely by surprise.

"I won't be a moment!" he calls, getting to his feet, and brushes off his dressing gown. Herc is standing on the doorstep, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's nearly noontime and Hermann hasn't even dressed, and he's got the damn bulldog pup panting happily on a leash. "Yes?"

"I was just passing by with the new kiddo here," says Herc, bending to scratch between Max's ears, "and thought I'd drop by to make sure everything's right as rain. You lot seemed out of sorts."

"Come in," Hermann sighs, and twitches one slippered foot out from under the pup's eager tongue as it trots past. "Can I offer you some tea? _Er_ , excuse the porridge. Newton was in a rush to get out this morning, chasing after some lead on a sighting several miles upshore—"

"Then if he isn't here," Herc sighs in relief, sitting down on the sofa, "may I speak frankly?"

Hermann pauses halfway to the kitchen and turns, nodding slowly. "May I fetch tea first?"

"Go on then," Herc replies, rubbing Max's back till he collapses in a wrinkly pile. "Why not."

"I'd been keeping my colleagues apprised of these happenings by letter, of course," Hermann lies smoothly, returning several minutes later with two full mugs. "It's not often one stumbles upon a renowned American academic out here in these wilds, so I couldn't very well neglect to inquire—"

"You have nothing to fear from me," says Herc, quietly, accepting his tea with a nod, and gestures for Hermann to sit. " _Or_ from my blockhead of a son, even though it may not seem so."

Hermann sucks in his breath and stares into his mug. "I'm most grateful for your discretion," he replies, " _and_ for your efforts at curbing the lad, for all the good they may do. He's got Newton worried."

"Poor kid's had a right rough time watching the whole village pair off left, right, and center," says Herc, and slurps his tea; Hermann just barely manages to suppress his shudder of irritation. "He's mad about Emma, but she's only got eyes for that Yancy bloke. Can't say as I blame her."

"Raleigh has thoroughly charmed Pentecost's daughter," sighs Hermann, stealing a surreptitious glance in the direction of Newton's door, "so let us hope he's charmed the Admiral as well."

Herc bends to scratch the top of Max's head when the pup whimpers, briefly obscuring his features from Hermann's scrutiny. "The Admiral's a charming man, there's no doubt about it," he says.

 _I shouldn't wonder_ , Hermann thinks to himself, but the thought lingers. "I expect the two of you must have a lot to discuss, what with raising children on your own," he ventures with caution.

"Enough to occupy an evening or two at the pub," Herc agrees, fetching his mug from the floor. "It's a brave thing he did, taking in that girl. Bringing them up alone's no walk in the park."

"They'll follow their hearts in the end," Hermann tells him, "and nothing else. Nature will override all efforts to the contrary. I've been teaching for long enough to have learned this above all else."

"You said once your father wanted you to stay close, wanted you there in London," Herc says, cradling his mug. "Why didn't you? Why'd you run to the ends of this godforsaken island?"

"Because," Hermann sighs, setting his mug on the table, no longer interested, "I was chasing my mother's ghost as insistently as Newton's chasing his monster. Perhaps they're one and the same."

"You be careful," says Herc, roughly, and gets up, tugging on the leash. "Be _careful_ , do you hear?"

Max whimpers, gets up on his stubby legs, and licks Hermann's slipper before trailing after Herc.

"We shall do our best," says Hermann, resolutely, and escorts them to the door, "and nothing less."

Once they've gone, he spends half an hour waffling over what to do.

He eventually retreats to his room to dress, only to hear Newton's door swing open and the flushing of the toilet several minutes later. He doesn't manage to get his shirt and slipover jumper in order quickly enough; by the time he bursts out of his room, Newton's door is shut again and the bowl of cold porridge, which Hermann hadn't actually managed to clear away, has vanished. Hermann feels slight relief.

"I'll fetch us some things for supper while I'm out and about," he says despairingly to the empty common area, only half convinced that Newton is listening. "You'll feel better after the porridge."

Hermann spends the next few hours rambling the roads and by-ways he knows by heart, although he can't seem to bring himself to stop off at his bench in the woods for a spot of reading. Around four, he swings back through the village for purposes of cajoling some bread and cheese out of Emma at the Inn; he inquires with forced politeness after her driving progress, as if he's genuinely intrigued, and he ends up parting with only a pittance in exchange for light supper. On the way home, he considers what might be going through Newton's baffling excuse for a head. If only . . .

 _If only you hadn't been too thick-skulled to understand_ , Hermann thinks. _You've wounded him._

Once he's returned to the cottage, he's furious with himself, so he sets the parcel containing their supper down in the grass, sits down on the edge of the porch, and stretches his legs out in front of him with a wince. It takes a great deal of faffing about with the contents of his pockets before he manages to roll a decent cigarette; a great deal of time passes, in which he's rolled himself and smoked at least half a dozen before the front door swings open and Newton, barefoot, pads over to sit down beside him. He's in his underthings and Hermann's dressing gown, an unkempt mess.

"I can see why you took this up after all," he says, trying to sound nonchalant, but his voice is scratchy and pitched too high, and it's then that Hermann notices his eyes are so raw that one of them looks as if it's been rubbed to red _hell._ "It's a stressful fucking life, man. No joke."

Hermann makes a move to stub out his cigarette so that he can put an arm around Newton, but Newton snatches what's left of it from between his fingers and takes a few puffs before pitching it into the grass. "There now," he says, reaching for Newton as he hunkers back down, "you must be famished. Let's get you back inside, and I'll see to slicing the bread and cheese for supper."

Newton twitches away from him, making himself even smaller than he'd seemed before. "I can't do this if it's going to be too hard for you, too dangerous for you," he says, his voice gone so quiet that Hermann almost can't hear it above the lapping of the water beyond the cottage, just behind them. "I'll call Tendo back tomorrow and tell him not to pack my shit; I'll ship my books back."

"My love, you'll do no such thing," Hermann whispers, finally getting an arm around him, pulling him close. "You're a challenge, certainly, but you're no _burden._ I'm sorry if—Newton, I couldn't—"

Newton clings to him, and it's then that Hermann realizes he has been shaking the whole time; the events of the evening before snap into even sharper focus. " _I'm_ sorry," he babbles, "I just, you know, this thing happens sometimes, it's not really anything to worry about, sometimes I just—"

" _Shhh_ ," Hermann murmurs, letting go of him just enough to snag the parcel, and tears into Emma's wrapping job until he's able to rip off a chunk of bread. "You've had nothing but porridge; that can't have helped on top of it all. Eat this, and then go have a shower while I see to the rest."

"You're no cook," says Newton, his mouth full, leaning into Hermann, "but you know how to take care of a guy after you've royally screwed up. That counts for something. Apology accepted."

"Shoo," Hermann says, kissing the nearest bit of Newton's face with which his mouth comes in contact, which happens to be his eyebrow. Newton sighs and gets up, still chewing on the bread, and Hermann collects their supper before following him inside. "More bathing, less talking."

After hot tea and toasted bread with cheese, they're too exhausted to do much more than retire to Newton's room and curl up under the covers.

Hermann knows he ought to keep quiet and just hold Newton—let him know he's wanted, needed, _more_ than worth the risk—but he can't let it rest.

"My physician is circumspect, very thorough," he murmurs, stroking Newton's hair. "You might consider explaining your situation in greater detail. _Hush_ , no, my darling. Not now. Rest."

Newton purses his lips against the finger Hermann has set to them, heaving a sigh. It's not quite a kiss, so Hermann cups his cheek and searches Newton's eyes for a moment, wordlessly asking permission. Newton nods and starts forward, relieved and desperate; he's tired, _they're_ tired, but he tastes like tea and toast now instead of stale porridge and panic. Hermann rocks him.

"We'll get your helpful friends back on the phone tomorrow, how's that?" he asks drowsily. "Tell them where they ought to ship your things. Perhaps we ought to ring your family as well."

Newton nods against Hermann's chest, his eyes closed: loose-limbed, already half asleep.

"They'll get used to the idea, I'm sure," he mumbles. "They're stuffy, and they'll love you."

" _Du schlafen müssen_ , _bist_ _jetzt sicher_ ," Hermann soothes him, yawning, and reaches to douse the lamp on Newton's bedside table. " _Ich werde dich nie verlassen_ ," he murmurs, and Newton smiles.

 

*

 

Needless to say, they spend another week sequestered away indoors.

Fortunately, the rain has returned with a vengeance, so no one thinks twice to ask where they've been on the few occasions when one or the other or _both_ of them makes a furtive run for edibles. They read passages of each other's books back and forth at one another; they argue over whose impression of whose accent is worse; they shiver and spill tea on Newton's sheets; they sleep late and make love and listen to jazz. Newton wakes to catch Hermann smoking one morning and, laughing, chases him onto the porch.

Their second stint in the telephone box for purposes of finalizing shipping plans with Tendo is, perforce, delayed. A downpour necessitates closing the door, and there's so little room to begin with that Hermann gives up and wraps both arms around Newton while he babbles down the line at his friend. Hermann tenses as someone passes outside with a black umbrella, but the figure, Mako in muddy red wellies, pauses to tilt it at the last minute. She grins, winking and waving at them, so Hermann nods back. Newton returns her wave, in the midst of dictating Hermann's address.

Early the next week, sunshine and humidity return with a vengeance.

The Becket boys show up Tuesday morning with a fishing invitation; Hermann, having strained himself considerably the night before, opts for staying behind while Newton reluctantly agrees to accompany them alone. He uses the time to revise some autumn course syllabi far overdue for attention, although he regrets not having Newton to hand for offering commentary both ludicrous and helpful. That evening, the Beckets return him in one piece, and while there are enough fish to go around (the brothers stay for supper, and even do all of the cooking and clean-up this time), it's mostly thanks to Yancy's prodigious efforts. Raleigh and Newton have brought back three fresh jars of jellyfish.

"I would've expected the bloom to be gone by now," Newton says around a mouthful of trout, tapping the jar they’ve set in the middle of their reluctantly-cleared table as a conversation piece, "but they're hanging on pretty fiercely out there in the murk. Still no sign of Nessie, though."

"Do you think there ever _was_ anything out there? I mean," Yancy clarifies, "there's that sixth-century account of Saint Columba encountering those people burying some guy who'd been bitten to death, and then he went all holy bad-ass on the beast next time it tried to munch on a swimmer. After that, there's _nothing_ on the record till you hit, what, those people in nineteen thirty-three who say something huge crossed the road in front of them and went into the water? It doesn't add up."

"It _is_ awfully incongruous," Hermann agrees hesitantly, shooting Newton a be-quiet-now-and-I-shall-be- _very-_ nice-to-you-later implying look. "To think that there's such a vivid account from the five-hundreds and then _nothing_ until the nineteen-thirties. Surely this indicates something amiss."

"Then how do you explain what the sonar expedition picked up last year?" Raleigh asks, and Newton looks suddenly less glum than vindicated. The lad, it seems, is a promising student.

"Could be anything down there," says Yancy, shrugging. "Logs, stuff like that. Jeez, kid, you've seen those huge trees on the bank. I'm sure there's a lot of riff-raff stuck in those currents."

"You and Tendo and your tree theories," Newton snorts. "Sure, man. You just go with that."

Dinner wraps up companionably enough once they get off the subject of monsters and related ilk. Raleigh spends a solid twenty minutes quizzing Newton on his tattoos, so while they're occupied with that and continuing to hassle the jellyfish, Yancy helps Hermann clear the table and bring out dessert. Biscuits out of a packet and too-sweet Earl Grey aren't fancy, but they hit the spot. Yancy seems sad to admit that they're leaving in less than a week, and Hermann insists that they must come around again before they do. Seeing them off into the dusk is a bittersweet affair.

"You guys never met each other before now?" Raleigh asks, lingering. "Never in your life?"

Hermann shakes his head, waving to Yancy, who's already up in the road. "Never," he says.

Raleigh grins and sticks his hands in his pockets, making his way after his brother. "It's been a great summer for everyone. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope we'll see you again."

"As long as you turn up reliably this time of year," Hermann says, "I don’t doubt you'll find us."

Newton, waiting inside on the sofa, has lined up all three jars of jellyfish on the coffee table. He's also doused all of the lamps, lit a pair of taper candles, and placed those in between the jars. The effect is eerie, otherworldly; Hermann could easily believe that they've slipped into some alternate reality where jellyfish house-ornaments are commonplace and leviathans rise from the deep.

"You're infuriating," Hermann says, offering Newton his hand, "and marvelous. Come to bed?"

They're languid, sleepy, and more than a little stuffed, but Hermann makes good on his promise.

Newton gasps and whimpers and cries out as Hermann sucks him, and it is the _loveliest_ litany ever to fall on Hermann's ears. They're both too exhausted by the end of it, too overstimulated, so Hermann swats Newton's hand away and tugs Newton in by his arm to spoon comfortably behind him. Newton nuzzles the curve of Hermann's neck and murmurs nonsense Hermann can't parse.

"You might speak up a little," Hermann suggests, stroking Newton's wrist. "I can't hear you."

"It's stupid," Newton mutters. "It wasn't that funny a joke anyway, Hermann. Forget it."

"I should like to hear your idea of a joke under these circumstances," Hermann admits.

Newton sighs heavily. "I was just saying, even if the local constabulary _were_ to burst in here, what could they really arrest us for? It's not as if we've actually broken sodomy law to the, um, _letter_."

"Would you _like_ to?" asks Hermann, mildly, although he means it as seriously as he's meant anything else since they'd started down this path.

Newton's breath catches; he falls silent.

"Yeah," he says. "I think I really would, but I'm afraid I'd fuck it up. _So_ , um. Not right now."

Hermann turns his head for a kiss. "You know I'm happy as we are as long as you're content."

"Ask me again in a couple of days," he sighs, cuddling closer. "I'm kind of busy basking here."

They return to public life the next morning, finding it sunny again, if breezy. They have lunch at the Inn with Mako and the Admiral rather by accident; the only two seats on offer are a pair at the four-seat table at which Mako and her father have been seated, and Hermann is all too quick to accept their offer made by way of Mako's excited waving and Pentecost's stern nod. Mako and Newton quickly become engrossed in a conversation regarding the persistent jellyfish (it would seem Raleigh has spent the morning talking her ear off about fishing the day before).

Pentecost regards Hermann thoughtfully and then glances sidelong at his daughter.

"She has one year left as of this autumn," he sighs, considering his half-pint. "Is that correct?"

"I regret to say as much, but yes," Hermann agrees. "Her time with us has been far too short."

"She might consider postgraduate work if you'd be amenable," Pentecost continues. "To supervising her, that is. I doubt she'd assent to working with anyone else. Stubborn."

"Yes, well," Hermann agrees, clinking his glass against Pentecost's. "She comes by it honestly. I should like to see a dissertation proposal sometime in the next few months if she can manage it."

"She'll either do it or she won't, Doctor Gottlieb," Pentecost says, the set of his lips twisting into something like a smile; he surprises Hermann by taking a drink. "As you're altogether too fond of saying."

"There's no accounting for our actions, I suppose," he says. " _Or_ for taste. But that young man—"

"Is a gentleman, yes, I'll give him that," Pentecost sighs. "And might become a permanent fixture."

"Sorry?" Hermann asks, tilting his head, interested. "I was given to understand they're leaving?"

"Military brats," Pentecost says, setting down his glass. "I know the type. Their father's high-ranking in the United States Army, and the whole family's moved a lot. They're UK-bound in the spring, although the boy's either not clear on what base, or not allowed to _say_ which just yet."

"Were they sent as a scouting party, then?" Hermann asks, incredulous. "One wonders if their younger sister begged to be brought along. The older brother's not long out of college, restless, and I don't think young Raleigh's ever considered the notion of higher education a day in his life."

"I'll hope they stay in the south," says Pentecost, wryly, "and that my daughter stays up here."

Hermann can't help but notice that Newton isn't so much listening to Mako anymore as stealing sidelong glances at Hermann and, every so often, risking a glance at Pentecost, too. Newton's eyes linger over Hermann's, briefly, as if he knows that Hermann is about to say something important.

"If they're determined enough," he says, holding Newton's gaze, "I don't doubt they'll find a way."

They spend the next two days with both Mako and the Becket brothers coming and going; there are pots of tea to be drunk, jellyfish to be released, and picnic lunches to be had. On Saturday morning, they accompany Mako to the station to see the lads off, and Hermann hadn't expected _nearly_ this many tears to turn up for the occasion—or, in fact, that some of them would be _his_.

When Mako squeezes Raleigh so tightly he can't breathe, Newton finds a convenient excuse for knocking Hermann's cane out of his grasp with the toe of his boot and, surreptitiously, taking his hand. They take over Mako-comforting duty once the boys have safely got on the train, although this falls more heavily to Newton the closer their cab takes them to Dores. Hermann watches the scenery pass while Mako sniffles on Newton's shoulder, shuddering to think it would have meant to see Newton off. If they hadn't confessed themselves, _could_ he have brought himself to part . . .

On returning Mako to the cottage she's sharing with her father, Pentecost asks them if they'll stay for dinner. He's employed a cook from the village, so the meal is far more competent than anything they've made for themselves, although Hermann tells Newton later, once they're home and wrapped warm together in the dark, that his cookery will no doubt _shine_ once he's got better to work with.

Sunday dawns brighter and hotter than ever, so by morning they've kicked off all the covers and pulled off what little clothing they'd worn to bed to begin with. They straggle out for brunch at the Inn, blessedly empty at this hour, and then pile into the telephone box for a third time because Newton wants to check in with the progress on his residual Stateside interests.

"Tendo, you're a miracle worker," he says into the receiver, idly waving some of Hermann's smoke out of his face; they've got the door open again, so Hermann's leaning against the outside wall, listening in as best he can, enjoying both his cigarette and the sunshine. "It's already on the way?"

"We'll arrive a week or two ahead of it even so," Hermann mutters. "Bloody slow freight."

"No shit, Hermann," says Newton, covering the mouthpiece. "That's how I shipped my books."

Tendo shouts, loudly enough for Hermann to hear, "Hey, nerds! _Focus_! Wedded bliss later."

The next call is only marginally less entertaining, if only because Newton closes the door for a solid five minutes and spends the whole time speaking what sounds like intensely agitated German.

Hermann smokes faster, finishes, rolls another; he can catch every other word of what's swiftly evolving into something of an argument. The aspect to which they object isn't so much that Newton has found some stranger with whom he's decided to live, but that he's _not coming back first_.

The door of the telephone box opens unceremoniously, and the phone's all but thrust into Hermann's unsuspecting hand. Newton looks like he's on the verge of tears, so Hermann pitches what's left of his fag and steps inside, closing the door behind him. As before, he's got very little choice but to occupy some of Newton's personal space given the cramped quarters. "Hello?" he says.

"So, Englishman who is taking my son," says Jacob Geiszler. "What do you have to say?"

" _Ich bin nicht Englisch gerade,_ " Hermann says hesitantly. "Surely he explained this?"

"Of course, of _course_ ," Jacob replies, no longer able to hide the laughter edging his voice. "He explained everything. That was a good job of faking the shovel talk, was it not?"

 _Save me_ , Hermann thinks, _from this family's bizarre sense of humor_ , but he proceeds with the conversation and finds himself smiling by the end of it. Newton bids them farewell, hangs up.

"You owe me tonight, darling," Hermann says under his breath as they stroll into the dusk.

"I guess so," says Newton, his tone equal parts agreement and hesitation. "What do you—"

"Only what you wish to give," Hermann reassures him. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Lacking a pair of boisterous fishing enthusiasts hanging on their doorstep, they spend the next few days in. Hermann continues to tweak his syllabi while Newton re-packs what books he hasn't used.

Saturday comes again before they know it, and July is almost over. Mako, subdued for a week since the Beckets' departure, drops by that morning to assuage her loneliness and check up on the last jar of jellyfish.

After an impromptu brunch, the three of them stroll along the lake shore while Mako looks for an ideal spot to release the creatures. Newton holds Hermann back while she picks her way down to the water. Hermann catches his arm for balance, gives him a questioning look.

"Before we leave," says Newton, resolutely, keeping his tone low and soft. "I want to try."

Hermann blinks at him, taken aback at the apparent non sequitur. "What do you mean?"

"Breaking the law," Newton replies, brushing Hermann's wrist. "If you like. I _mean_ —"

"We shan't rush into this," Hermann insists. "You've been anxious enough; I won't have—"

"I'm an adult," Newton sighs. "Remember? If I say I want you to, I've thought it through."

"You'll do the _doing_ first or—or we won't at all, not _here_ ," Hermann counters. "Agreed?"

Mako comes back up with the jar, slightly teary-eyed. "Raleigh loved them. _So_ _stupid_."

"I know," Newton tells her patiently, taking the jar, and then says to Hermann, "Agreed."

"But not tonight," Hermann replies, returning his smile. "Dear girl, let's get you home."

 

 *

 

"Look, tomorrow's the first of August," Newton sighs, casting his line, "and then we've got only twelve days left here? What a drag. The jellyfish have been keen, sure, but . . . not a single _sighting_ , Hermann. Not by us or by anyone else in this ridiculous village. What's with that?"

"Monsters are, by their very nature, elusive," Hermann reminds him. "Even your friend Heuvelmans would say as much. Be grateful you found an abnormal phenomenon at _all_."

"Abnormal, yeah," Newton concedes, "but not _unheard of_. I hauled out here for something extraordinary, remember? That sonar expedition last year had really gotten my hopes up."

"You called _me_ a monster early on, if I recall," says Hermann, dryly. "Surely I'm enough?"

Newton looks so startled he might drop his pole, so Hermann catches hold of it to prevent it from toppling into the water. "God, right," Newton mutters. "I'm an _idiot_. Of course you're enough."

"I hadn't meant to chide," Hermann reassures him, and Newton visibly relaxes. "Once we've taken back the boat, assuming we've caught nothing, what would you like to do with the evening?"

Newton gives him a meaningful look, biting his lip. "Cash in on that agreement," he says.

"I've been ready for as long as you've been willing," Hermann replies. "Then of _course_."

Two hours later, they row up, entirely empty-handed as far as fish are concerned, to return the boat.

Chuck stops whatever repair work in which he's been engrossed and comes down to the shore. Max trots along at his heels, already dedicated to the prickliest of his masters. Hermann stares at the dog, who looks like he'd love nothing so much as to slobber all over Hermann's shoes again, while Newton gives up on trying to tether the boat because Chuck, exasperated, starts to do it for him.

"The last hurrah, is it?" he asks Newton, finishing the tether, removing his hat as he stands up and wipes at his eyes. "We won't be seeing you lot for a while, will we? You'll be busy, I imagine."

"You have it right," says Hermann, before Newton can respond. "Academic life is demanding."

Chuck makes a face at him, not quite a frown, and looks back to Newton. "I'd wager my life you didn't imagine you wouldn't be going back, eh? Let the Limeys get to you. Well, listen. Dad's fond of you odd ducks, but I can't for the life of me understand why. That's got to be good enough."

"Max here has been a great influence on you," says Newton, finally, and claps Chuck on the shoulder. The young man flinches, but he doesn't pull away. "Dogs love everyone, you know?"

"Get out," says Chuck, and smacks Newton's arm almost companionably. "I have work to do."

"I think that went rather well," Hermann says in a low voice, once they're far enough up the road to be out of earshot. "All's well that ends well, isn't that so? He isn't completely irredeemable."

"I like Max a lot more than I like _him_ ," Newton sighs. "C'mon, I'm hungry. Inn for dinner?"

Emma greets them like she's never been happier to see them, although the usual spring in her step isn't there, and Hermann can only suppose that Yancy's departure is to blame. He wonders as she takes their order what will come of these bright young things with their whole lives ahead of them; they'll find love, certainly, find places to be from and have children of their own. Once Emma has gone, Newton reaches to tap Hermann's elbow, inclining his head. Hermann glances over his shoulder at the next table along the wall, its occupants' voices snapping abruptly into focus.

"I don't know what's going on _there,_ " Newton admits. "I'm serious. What do you think?"

Hermann leaves the Admiral and Hansen to their conversation on the subject of teaching young people to drive. "I think each has found a friend in the other, and that's fitting," Hermann replies.

They take their time eating; by the time they've finished, Pentecost and Hansen have gone, so there's little chance of being tempted to drinks. They thank Emma and give pints a pass, and their walk home is quiet, if companionably so. Hermann strides ahead and unlocks the door, holding it open for Newton with as much understated chivalry as he can muster. Newton kisses him up against it no sooner than he's closed it behind them, trembling in Hermann's sudden embrace.

"We're in the ass-end of nowhere," he says, "pun absolutely _not_ intended. How's this going to work? Like, I don't know if you'd noticed, but the village corner shop doesn't exactly sell—"

"One of my colleagues at the university has ready access to medical supplies," Hermann tells him, maneuvering them away from the door, "and doesn't mind sharing. I tend to travel prepared." He drags Newton along to the bathroom and makes him wait while he swallows half a painkiller.

"Aren't you a regular Boy Scout," Newton sighs, relieved. "What is it, Surgilube or similar?"

"Until such time as the market catches up with covert demand," Hermann replies, tugging Newton along until they've reached his room, "we shall make do. Newton, you're still shivering."

They'd washed and changed Hermann's bedclothes the week before, although they're wrinkled from having been badly hung over doors in the absence of a clothesline. They kiss again, warming to each other in the many-days-undisturbed air.

While Hermann undresses, Newton sits back to hungrily watch; he's hard by the time Hermann turns his hand to Newton's shirt buttons and his trousers, positively _restless._ Hermann wonders if what he needs is to be relieved of expectations.

"If it's too much pressure, _say_ so," Hermann tells him gently. "I shall take point if you think . . . "

" _Please_ , yes," Newton whispers, melting under him. "Wanna feel you inside me so bad I _can't_ —"

What comes tumbling out of Newton's mouth from time to time is shocking in the best of ways, and this instance is no exception.

Hermann kisses him roughly, easing off when Newton's whimpers and the tightening of his fingers in Hermann's hair finally match the urgency of his movements beneath Hermann's body; he's wanted this for so long, _yearned_ for someone whose sharp, restless mind is equal to the vastness of his heart. Newton looks hazy and lost when Hermann goes to fetch supplies from the dresser.

Hermann sets them at the foot of the bed, and then crawls up to kneel between Newton's thighs.

"I want you already close when I take you," he whispers, drawing back from the heady, breathless kiss into which he'd instantly been coaxed, "so just lie still now. _There_. It's all right."

He moves away only just long enough to fetch the condom and Surgilube from where he's left them. It takes so little time, so _little_ time and the judicious application of lubricant, to stroke Newton till he's a sticky, leaking mess between their bellies, till he's teary-eyed and gasping.

Hermann presses a kiss to the corner of Newton's mouth and asks if he's fine, asks if he's _ready_.

When Newton nods just once, Hermann re-slicks his hand, almost losing his grip on the tube, and then trails his fingers up Newton's inner thigh till he can dip down and press, fingertips tentatively questioning.

" _Fuck_ ," Newton hisses. Hermann's in up to his right index knuckle, works in his middle finger when Newton nods and moans encouragement, presses _deeper_. Hermann feels dizzy, lightheaded as the half-painkiller kicks in; any discomfort he'd have been in by this point from kneeling for so long has been suppressed, although it doesn't keep Newton from whispering even as he's being opened from the inside out, three fanned fingers, _four_ —"Hermann, are you okay? Are you _okay_?"

Hermann leans down and kisses the words right out of Newton's mouth, runs his tongue along the ridge of Newton's eyetooth, incisors, molars until they shudder, panting, and break apart. "Yes," Hermann tells him, "very much so, but I could—could be much _better_. By your leave."

" _Christ_ , Hermann, what the _fuck_ , I'm gonna come if you keep talking, would you just," Newton mutters; he's no help when it comes to putting on the condom, but Hermann hadn't expected this to be any different. "Yeah, man, okay. _Better_ ," he sighs shakily as Hermann positions himself.

Sliding into him is almost easy, although there's some resistance, and it's difficult to discern how much of Newton's cry is pain and how much of it is surprise. Hermann kisses his forehead, breathless, draws back and pushes inside him again; Newton swallows the noise he makes this time, eyes shut tight, but he's shoving the heels of his hands into the small of Hermann's back, impatient. He _is_ close, closer than Hermann had thought; the angle he's got is perfection itself and the _sounds_ Newton is making now are the ones Hermann knows mean his control's slipping, and— _and_ —

"Oh _darling_ ," Hermann groans, laughing as the first wave of orgasm steals his breath, "I'm sorry."

Newton tenses under him then, digs his blunt fingertips in between Hermann's ribs and _wails_.

Hermann takes a moment to come back to his senses, breathing hard, and carefully pulls out before shifting to lie beside Newton, who, shivering _still_ , curls over Hermann and clings to him with an exhausted sigh. They've tidied the bedclothes for naught, Hermann realizes, but he's so elated at having seen them through, so entirely _satisfied_ , that he doesn't care if this is how sleep finds them.

"You're quiet," Newton says in a painfully small voice. "Tell me something. Tell me how . . . "

"You're _still_ everything I want, Newton, that and more," Hermann murmurs, nuzzling just beneath Newton's earlobe, and takes a moment to nip at it, "I _insist_ that you return the favor soonest."

Newton whimpers, squirming contently against him. "I'm wiped out. Maybe in a couple days?"

"I shall hold you to it," Hermann replies, fumbling in the bedclothes till he finds an errant article of clothing (Newton's shorts) and uses it to clean them off. "But first, I'd also like to know—"

Newton kisses him until he can't breathe, so Hermann just holds him close, doesn't let go.

With a new diversion at their disposal, even later mornings than before become commonplace.

In the days still left, they keep mostly to themselves, although they make a point of being out and about to enjoy the weather, which seems to have cast off all pretenses of rain. They don't catch sight of any more shimmers or shadows out in the water, and Hermann wonders if the jellyfish have finally gone the way of all things. He asks Newton, who shrugs, his eyes trained far on the waves.

They don't finish packing until the day before Herc is due to haul them and all of their things to the rail station.

There are arguments to be had over whose book has been subsumed by a pile of whose, debates over the merits of actually going to the trouble of washing the linens again versus just _burning_ them and leaving surreptitious payment. Hermann wins the laundry argument, although Newton pretends not to know what's become of one particularly abused pillowcase.

They have pints at the Inn with Hansen, Pentecost, and Mako on their last night in Dores.

Mako isn't particularly saddened by their departure, not when she knows she'll be returning to Saint Andrews and seeing them again as soon as late September. Herc, on the other hand, seems genuinely put out to be losing _all_ of them until next season, although Chuck comes in with the dog just as Hermann and Newton are departing for the evening. He gives them a perfunctory salute.

"Now, that's all of it as far as I'm aware," Herc tells them the next afternoon at the station, battening down the hatch on his Prefect. "If I find anything in the cottage, I'll just have it sent along."

"Your thoroughness, as always, is much appreciated," Hermann tells him, shaking his hand.

"Doctor Geiszler, it's been an honor to meet you," Herc tells Newton, shaking his hand once he's managed to disentangle himself from Hermann. "I'm glad we're not losing you. Welcome."

Newton doesn't know what to say, so he mutters an apology and throws his arms around Herc.

Traveling with as many boxes and pieces of luggage as they've got between them is no picnic, but they survive a delayed departure and a missed connection and _somehow_ end up on Hermann's doorstep with several taxi drivers' assistance. They leave boxes and bags piled up in Hermann's front hall, and Newton declines an immediate tour, insisting all he wants is a shower and sleep.

Hermann wakes the next morning to familiar, leaf-dappled light through his window, but the warmth huddled close in his arms is strange, still fragile and new. He kisses Newton's forehead and disentangles himself as best he can, slips into his dressing gown and makes his way quietly to a tiny kitchen gone dusty with several months' disuse. He draws the curtains and makes a job of wiping down the work-top, doesn't realize he's not alone till he's washing his hands at the sink, staring out the window.

Newton wraps his arms around Hermann's waist, tucks his chin over his shoulder.

"It's so grey," he says pensively. "The sea here, I mean. Just like it is back at home."

"Wait till you see the south," Hermann tells him. "I'll take you to Dover, let you wander the scree under our chalk cliffs," he adds, lips twisting in amusement. "You'll be the next Mary Anning."

"Don't even joke about that, man," Newton says, punching him in the arm. "She's my _hero_."

 _Heroine_ , Hermann wants to correct, but, here and now, as they are, it matters so very little and so much. "I wasn't having you on," he murmurs. "You'll make a name for yourself. I know you will."

"How about that hot tea you promised?" Newton replies, jabbing him in the ribs, and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done._
> 
> —Alan Turing

**Author's Note:**

>  **NOTE ON THE TITLE:** Alan Turing loved Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and he also had a profound love of rhyme and doggerel verse. It's said that he frequently recited the rhyme the Queen chants over the poisoned apple—
> 
> _When she breaks the tender peel_   
>  _to taste the apple in my hand,_   
>  _her breath will still, her blood congeal:_   
>  _then I'll be fairest in the land_
> 
> —and this, taken in conjunction with the manner of Turing's untimely end, was too poignant for me to ignore. We have too many stories of historical tragedy, too many narratives where breath stops for death instead of wonder. Given Hermann's character is coded as something of a nod to Turing, I wanted to give him, him and Newton both, the happy ending Turing was denied.
> 
> My thanks to **whitmans-kiss** , **flux--and--flow** , **the-oxford-english-fangeek** , **ofdonut** , **blairtrabbit** , and **kowabungadoodles** for being the most thorough betas I could ask; my thanks to **priellan** [**for choosing my story summary in this Mini-Bang**](http://priellan.tumblr.com/post/86702120026/i-was-paired-up-with-the-lovely-irisbleufic-for); my thanks to **drhermannhottlieb** and **bowlingforgerbils** for getting me through the emotionally difficult research this piece required; and, finally, thanks to **cryptaniac** for rendering beautiful German from the English placeholders in my draft.


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